Cash from Gulf sovereign wealth funds is pouring into China and Southeast Asia as the region’s deep pockets look beyond the U.S. and Europe for investment targets.

About $2.3 billion of sovereign capital from the Middle East flowed into the greater China market last year, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Kenneth Hui said at a conference on Monday.

That figure is up from about $100 million in 2022, said Hui, the external executive director of Hong Kong’s central bank, citing data from Global SWF. 

Chinese financiers and regulators have made frequent trips to engage with the Gulf market, which traditionally was served by Europe, Hui added.

“This is the kind of money that we want to see coming in, not just for its own sake, but also for the wider impact,” Hui said. “This money is important because they often create good demonstrative effect to their local industry and the general public.”

Meanwhile, Southeast Asia is also getting a piece of the action as Middle Eastern institutional investors eye fast-growing economies such as Vietnam amid growing tensions between China and the West, according to TVM Capital Healthcare, a Dubai and Singapore dual-headquartered private equity firm. 

“Given the political developments with China and the United States, Middle Eastern countries are trying to stay fairly neutral and develop deep ties with everybody, including and in particular Southeast Asian nations,” said Helmut Schuehsler, Chairman and CEO at TVM Capital Healthcare after his firm announced the closing of its second Middle East fund, which drew $250 million last month.

The TVM Healthcare Afiyah Fund LP saw the participation of institutional investors from Gulf countries and Europe, led by Jada Fund of Funds, a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Venture Capital.

TVM Capital Healthcare is also raising a separate Southeast Asia fund with a target size of $150 million to $200 million. The new fund, which has commitments from two lead investors from the Middle East, is expected to have its initial closing, the first time that investors commit to making their investment in the fund, by the end of this year, the South China Morning Post reported.

Carlyle Group is developing plans to form a new Mediterranean-focused oil and gas company after the private equity fund agreed to acquire Energean’s assets in Egypt, Italy and Croatia for up to $945 million.

The deal announced Thursday will allow the U.S. private equity fund to tap into the eastern Mediterranean gas market that has grown rapidly in recent years as gas demand in Egypt soars and Europe seeks alternatives to Russian gas, Reuters reports.

Carlyle International Energy Partners, which handles the firm’s non-U.S. energy investments, said the new company will upgrade existing assets and grow through acquisitions, the news agency said.

London-based Energean, whose main production comes from a gas facility off Israel’s Mediterranean coast, plans to expand to the wider Europe, Middle East and Africa region, Reuters said.

When Ibrahim Ajami was tapped by Mubadala to open a San Francisco office in 2017 and drive the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund’s tech investments, he adopted a regimen of organic green tea, almonds, melatonin and magnesium citrate.

What started as a jet lag remedy to deal with grueling commutes from the Gulf also placed Ajami squarely in the mindset of Silicon Valley and its nimble ways for making money, The Information writes in a profile of the Lebanese-born, UAE-raised financier.

Ajami, now 49, went on to become chief of Mubadala’s venture capital division, where he has managed its investments in emerging companies including SpaceX, Brex, Klarna and Waymo. Along the way, he’s tried to dispel the belief that sovereign funds are slow and bureaucratic, shaping Mubadala to compete with Silicon Valley’s top VC firms.

“The way founders speak about Sequoia – why not, 20 years from now, won’t they speak that way about Mubadala?” Ajami said in an interview with the news outlet.

For Mubadala’s next act, Ajami is seeking to milk his tech connections to put more money directly into startups, Kate Clark writes in The Information. At the same time, Mubadala is increasingly using its clout to encourage Western companies and investors to deepen their ties to the UAE’s tech ecosystem, part of the country’s broader push to diversify its economy away from oil.

“It’s increasingly becoming a place where you’re not just flying in and presenting to the large sovereign wealth funds,” Ajami said. “You’re thinking about, ‘What are the market opportunities for me here? What are the opportunities to build a business here?’”

From developing new permutations for online payment to addressing food security and climate change, Abu Dhabi has turned into the region’s most fertile greenhouse for tech startups.

A new report by San Francisco-based Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network ratifies the phenomenon that has become evident in a daily flow of product and funding announcements from fledgling companies in the UAE capital.

The Global Startup Ecosystem Report identifies Abu Dhabi as the fastest-growing startup ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa region, measuring a 28% growth rate between July 2021 and December 2023.

The Silicon Valley data tracker also highlights key players in Abu Dhabi that are nurturing the startup cradle, including Mubadala, ADQ, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), startAD, and the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development.

Collaborations with the sovereign wealth funds and other UAE institutions have facilitated a soft-landing for startups in Abu Dhabi from around the world, providing them with access to capital and commercial opportunities, the report says. As a result, Abu Dhabi’s Hub71 community now hosts more than 315 startups that have collectively raised $1.5 billion, the report says.

The GSER, analyzes data from over 4.5 million companies across more than 300 entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems. Abu Dhabi’s ranking jumped 15 spots compared to the previous year, based on $284 million in total early-stage funding and $1.06 billion in total venture capital funding from 2019 to 2023.

Cargo shippers, cruise boat owners and insurers are calling for urgent action to put an end to eight months of attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

“We call for states with influence in the region to safeguard our innocent seafarers and for the swift de-escalation of the situation in the Red Sea,” 14 of the world’s biggest shipping companies said in a joint statement issued on Wednesday.

The signatories are: Asian Association of Shipowners, Bimco, CLIA, ECSA, Intermanager, Intercargo, IAPH, ICS, IFMSA, IMEC, International Maritime Pilots Association, IPTA, FONBASA, and World Shipping Council.

Insurance industry sources said that additional war risk premiums, paid when vessels sail through the Red Sea, had hovered close to 0.7% of the value of a ship in recent days after rising to as much as 1% earlier this year, Reuters reports.

They say more attacks are likely to push insurance rates higher, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra costs to every voyage.

Anticipation of the Gulf’s first sanctioned casino complex has sparked a development boom in the UAE emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, with five-star resorts and multi-million dollar villas rapidly springing up from the desert sands.

Las Vegas casino operator Wynn Resorts last year announced plans for a $4 billion resort on the artificial Marjan islands, about one hour’s drive north of Dubai, which had been all but abandoned since they were completed in 2013.

Now, more than 20 developers are busy at work with Marjan, the owner of the islands, planning to build 9,000 new hotel rooms and as many villas, Bloomberg reports.

Currently there are six hotels with a total of 3,052 rooms, including JW Marriott and Rixos.

Already popular with Russian and Chinese tourists, the resort is expected to lure foreign gamblers looking for a taste of Las Vegas closer to home.

RAK’s small international airport is planning to triple its capacity to 2 million passengers with construction of a new terminal by 2027, when the casino resort is expected to open to the public.

Amid global efforts to move away from fossil fuels, the world’s biggest oil producers see continued growth in demand for at least the next 20 years.

OPEC Secretary General Hathaim Al Ghais offered a peek at the bloc’s long-term forecast in a response to the International Energy Agency’s report on Wednesday that projects oil demand peaking by 2029 and leveling off at around 106 million barrels per day towards the end of the decade, Reuters reports.

The OPEC chief, writing in Energy Aspects, called the IEA report “dangerous commentary, especially for consumers, [that] will only lead to energy volatility on a potentially unprecedented scale.”

Al Ghais said similar narratives had been proven wrong previously, such as the IEA suggesting gasoline demand had peaked in 2019 or that coal demand had peaked in 2014.

As Saudi Arabia invests billions of dollars to adorn its western Red Sea coast with uber-luxe resorts, the kingdom is encouraging foreign tourists to relax on the beach secure in the knowledge that their state-of-the-art hotels are aiming for net-zero emissions.

Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb told the 1,500 delegates attending the Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit in Brazil on Thursday that his nation is committed to sustainable tourism in its sprawling $1.5 trillion Neom mega-project, building developments that adhere to environmental best practices.

Speaking at the Copacabana Palace hotel overlooking Rio de Janeiro’s far-more-developed Atlantic coastline, Al-Khateeb laid down a welcome mat for international investors looking to sink money into the Saudi sand.

“The kingdom’s doors are open for business,” the Saudi minister said at the summit, a spin-off from the annual “Davos in the Desert” conference in Riyadh that is backed by the Public Investment Fund. “We are keen to provide a favorable environment for international investors, and the investment facilities aim to make doing business in the kingdom in the most efficient and the least expensive way.”

While home to Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, the Gulf nation is stressing its commitment to the environment at the Brazil conference. The PIF, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, issued a report on Thursday that highlighted the state mining company Ma’aden’s sustainability efforts, including projects for biodiversity management, vegetation improvement and the preservation of seaside mangrove tree thickets in coastal areas.