Talabat Holding, which staged the Gulf’s largest IPO of the year, made its trading debut on the Dubai Financial Market stock exchange with a 6.9% drop in its shares.|

The MENA delivery service’s decline on Tuesday was followed with a 12% plunge by its parent company Delivery Hero in Frankfurt.

Talabat raised $2 billion last week in the initial sale of a 20% stake in the popular motorcycle-driven food delivery company.

The Gulf has been one of the busiest regions for IPOs in 2024, with recent share sales by Saudi Arabia’s United International Holding Co., UAE-based Lulu Retail Holdings and Oman’s OQ Exploration & Production.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is making the rounds in the Gulf, consulting with leaders in the UAE and Saudi Arabia about trade and the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape.

After being greeted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Starmer told reporters his main focus was on business between the two countries, The Guardian reports.

“I’ve been making the case that now’s the time for further investment into our country,” he said.

Starmer met earlier in the day with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi.

Investors from around the world have been pouring into Abu Dhabi this week for conferences focused on decoding the state of global finance and cashing in on the exploding growth of cryptocurrencies.

An exuberant crowd of crypto traders cheered Eric Trump at Abu Dhabi’s Bitcoin MENA conference on Tuesday as the President-elect’s son hailed the digital currency’s cracking the $100,000 mark and said it has a “special place in our heart.”

With some among the thousands at the event wearing red MAGA-like hats with the words, “Make Crypto Great Again,” Eric Trump said he believes Bitcoin will eventually reach $1 million. “You are going to have the most pro-crypto president in the history of America,” he said.

Among those spotted at the conference were Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital and the former White House communications director who was fired by Trump after 11 days on the job. Other speakers at the conference included Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and David Bailey, co-founder and CEO of BTC Inc., which publishes Bitcoin magazine.

At Abu Dhabi Finance Week in the city’s ADGM financial center, billionaire investor Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, warned against the clash of America-first ideology with an increasingly globalized business landscape. “It’s now a case of individual interests at odds in a world that has greater internal conflict and also greater external conflict,” Dalio said. “We are a world at war.”

Also at ADFW came the announcement that AE Coin, the UAE’s first government-regulated digital currency, will launch soon, after receiving final approval from the Central Bank. 

Apple is making plans to expand in Saudi Arabia.

The world’s largest tech hardware company announced on Sunday that it will launch an online store in the summer of 2025, followed by the opening of several Apple Stores in 2026, with a flagship location in the Riyadh historic section of Diriyah.

The company said it will continue support of an all-women’s academy for software developers in Riyadh, in which 2,000 students have trained and published apps.

Apple said it has spent more than $2.6 billion with local companies since 2019.

This week’s Bitcoin MENA conference in Abu Dhabi will showcase some of the key cryptocurrency players in the incoming Trump administration, including the President-elect’s son Eric, who will deliver the keynote to a crowd of 6,000 at the ADNEC center.

Also speaking at the Gulf’s biggest crypto gathering is billionaire Steve Witkoff, who has been appointed the new White House envoy for the Middle East, Reuters reports. Witkoff is co-founder of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency platform launched in September that Donald Trump and his family helped form.

Both Trump and Witkoff will be holding “whales-only” chats in the conference’s VIP lounge, where admission requires a $9,999 pass for whales, the crypto nickname for large players who have potential to move markets, the news agency said.

Other speakers with close ties to World Liberty Financial include Justin Sun, the 32-year-old Chinese founder of blockchain platform Tron, Reuters reports.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who served a four-month U.S. prison sentence this year for crypto-connected money-laundering law violations, will also hold a whale session at the conference.

Right from the start, Michael Milken showed why the conference bears his name as he opened the Milken Institute Middle East and Africa Summit on Thursday in Abu Dhabi.

Drawing from his wide range of contacts, the Wall Street legend probed princes, investors and CEOs on “Navigating a Changing Global Economy” in the grand ballroom at Abu Dhabi’s St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort.

Milken focused on the region’s galloping pace of growth, citing reports that “the wealth of the Middle East and Africa has reached 67% of the wealth of the Americas.” The dramatic change that has occurred in the last two decades, he said, shows “the importance of the Middle East as a provider of capital to the world.”

The billionaire financial guru will also wrap up the conference during its final session on Friday when Milken interviews Khaldoon Al Mubarak, CEO and Managing Director of the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund and a member of Abu Dhabi’s Executive Council.

Just before the opening bell, it was announced that Dr. Jill Biden, First Lady of the United States, woulld drop by Saadiyat Island for a 20-minute conversation focusing on women’s health care, one of her main initiatives in the White House.

Investment bankers, hedge fund managers and bond traders always form the core of Milken summits. Among those taking part in the Abu Dhabi edition are Guggenheim Partners’ Alan Schwartz, Golub Capital’s Lawrence Golub, Goldman Sachs’ Stephanie Rader, Eldridge Industries’ Todd Boelhy, TCW’s Katie Koch and Brightstar Capital’s Andrew Weinberg.

Responding to Milken in the opening session, Mohamed Mansour, the Egyptian founder and Chairman of London-based Man Capital, said education and jobs are the central need in the region.

“We are facing the biggest change since the 19th century,” he said. “We had the industrial revolution and now we have AI. What assets do we have? The youth. So we have to foster that change and give people a chance.” 

Prince Turki Al Faisal, Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and a former ambassador to the U.S., added: “More and more education is what we need in our part of the world. There is just too much destruction… and our world community must come together to stop the fighting.”

Sheikh Shakhboot Nahyan Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of State for African Affairs, said that the UAE is built on partnership with less developed parts of the world and is working to bring other countries into its orbit. “When we go in Africa, we do not have a checkout date,” he said, adding, “We would love to go to space with Africa.”

Also at the Summit was a touch of Hollywood in the person of actor Edward Norton, who spoke about “The Art of Storytelling,” accompanied by Elie Saab Jr., CEO of Lebanese couture house Elie Saab.

Dubai developer Hussain Sajwani sees AI gold in Southeast Asia.

The Emirati billionaire’s Damac Group plans to invest about $3 billion through its Edgenex subsidiary to build data centers across Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand over the next three to five years, Bloomberg reports.

Damac, which focuses primarily on Dubai real estate, has been diversifying into a variety of industries from tech to fashion.

Edgenex, which already operates two data centers in Saudi Arabia, plans to build the digital infrastructure in its new Asian facilities that can house the high-end servers essential for providing artificial intelligence services.

From Riyadh to AlUla, French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to carve out a bigger role for his country as a partner in Saudi Arabia’s economic overhaul.

Following talks in the Saudi capital with Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and an array of government officials and corporate executives, Macron was scheduled to meet Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for dinner on Wednesday in the ancient desert city.

“We want to partner with you, meaning we want to create jobs here,” Macron told a Saudi-French business forum on Tuesday. “We want to be a partner of your vision and the vision of the Crown Prince for 2030.”

The two countries have signed a flurry of business deals during Macron’s visit, including contracts for the construction of three solar parks by French companies TotalEnergies and EDF Renewables in tandem with China’s SPIC Huanghe Hydropower Development Co.