From Dubai to Beverly Hills, the question occupying the world’s financial elite is this: when will the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates?

Not till September at the earliest, says hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, who addressed the Milken Institute Annual Conference at The Beverly Hilton on Monday. Yie-Hsin Hung, CEO of State Street Global Advisors, sees rate cuts happening sooner: she predicted that the Fed will start to reduce rates as soon as July amid a more muted economy, speaking this morning at Day 2 of the Dubai FinTech Summit. 

The market-moving question is top of mind, but so too is the Gulf’s growth story amid the energy transition. “We’re known as oil exporters, but our second biggest export is capital,” Mohammed El-Kuwaiz, Chair of the Board of the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia said at Milken on Monday, fielding questions from The Economist’s Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes. 

“For the first time in our history we may be capital importers,” El-Kuwaiz predicted, as the kingdom looks to lure foreign capital to help fuel the $3 trillion of investment from now until 2030 for its economic diversification drive.

The money is being poured into developing sectors like tourism, manufacturing and tech alongside mega-projects like NEOM.

“The capital markets are an extremely important fulcrum” at this time and why Saudi has opened up to the world and cracked into the top 10 capital markets, he said. El-Kuwaiz shared the stage with Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup; Harvey Schwartz, CEO of Carlyle; and Ron O’Hanley, Chair and CEO of State Street.

Back in Dubai, non-oil growth was top of the agenda for UAE Minister of Economy Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri. Speaking at the Dubai Fintech Summit, he repeated his belief in 7% annual GDP growth, but said that 4.9% non-oil growth is possible in 2024.

“We see growth away from traditional economies such as real estate and tourism to new types of tourism, such as sustainable tourism, health tech. We’re looking into AI, generative AI, the UAE is becoming the capital of AI,” he said.

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, will distribute $31 billion in dividends despite a decline in first-quarter profit.

The payout is critical to the Saudi government, which owns 82% of the company and has reported a deficit for the sixth straight quarter.

The kingdom’s budget gap has forced a slowdown in the pace of building NEOM and other ambitious construction projects.

Aramco reported that first-quarter net income declined 14% to $27.3 billion, down from $31.9 billion a year earlier.

The company declared base dividend payouts for the first quarter totalling $20.3 billion and a performance-linked dividend distribution of $10.8 billion to be paid in the second quarter.

Saudi Arabia has pushed other oil producers to cut their output and keep oil prices high amid concerns about rising U.S. production creating surplus supply.

Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways has hired BNP Paribas and Morgan Stanley as bookrunners on the $1 billion IPO it’s planning by the end of 2024, Bloomberg reports.

ADQ, the sovereign wealth fund that owns Etihad, previously picked Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc and First Abu Dhabi Bank as lead advisers for the IPO, according to the news agency.

The IPO will create the first publicly traded major Gulf hub carrier as  Dubai-based rival Emirates also contemplates going public.

Etihad posted a five-fold increase in annual profit last year as it expanded to accommodate post-pandemic demand for international travel.

Fintech has long been a darling of the Dubai startup scene with over half of all finance-focused startups in the Gulf calling Dubai home.

The sector has shown some resilience amid the wider technology market correction, and it is against this backdrop that the Dubai International Financial Center is hosting its second annual summit startin Monday.

Some 8,000 investors, business executives, founders and regulators are expected at the event to discuss the latest innovations and challenges.

Driving conversations and deals over the two-day conference will be themes like financial inclusion — the region has more than 85 million “unbanked” adults — as well as business-friendly regulations in the UAE, emerging opportunities in green finance and cross-border cooperation.

The MENA region has 800 fintech startups valued at $15.5 billion, according to data by Dutch data platform Dealroom. 

Slated to attend are more than 20 governors of financial institutions including Essa Kazim, Governor of the DIFC; as well as Adena Friedman, Chair & CEO of Nasdaq Inc; Nic Dreckman, CEO of Bank Julius Baer; Yie-Hsin Hung, President & CEO of State Street Global Advisors; and Jim Demare, President Global Markets at Bank of America.

Local speakers include Abdullah bin Touq Al Marri, Cabinet Member and UAE Minister of Economy; H.E. Helal Saeed Al Marri, Director General, Department of Economy and Tourism, Dubai; Salem Humaid Al Marri, Director General, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre, UAE; and Faisal Belhoul, Vice Chairman of the Dubai Chamber.

Among the more than 1,000 speakers descending on Beverly Hills for the Milken Institute Global Conference starting Sunday will be a cadre of Middle East power brokers who are shaping the future of the region.

Between morning yoga sessions and sound baths – Milken has a “healthy aging” bent – the financiers, entrepreneurs and business leaders are likely to be figures of curiosity at this year’s four-day gathering at The Beverly Hilton. The Gulf’s economic diversification drives have gathered pace, making investments and headlines in everything from artificial intelligence and mineral mining to moviemaking and golf.

Making his way to the California sunshine is Ahmed Saeed Al Calily, Chief Strategy and Risk Officer at Abu Dhabi’s second-largest sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala Investment Co., who is set to speak on balancing climate risk and returns.

For advice on connecting Gulf investors with U.S. targets, Saleha Osmani, Managing Director of Dubai’s Falconbridge Advisors, will be on hand.

Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation can describe the city’s investment thesis on the future (yes, really) while Sheikha Shamma Al Nahyan, President and CEO of UAE Independent Climate Change Accelerators, will tout her home country’s bona fides in sustainable investing.

Qatar Investment Authority, the Gulf’s fourth-largest sovereign with $510 billion in assets under management, is sending Americas investment chief Mohammed Al Sowaidi and Head of Funds Mohsin Tanveer Pirzada. 

Saudi Arabia will be well-represented, too. As the kingdom looks to drive foreign investment through its Vision 2030 strategy, Minister of Investment Khalid Al-Falih will be on hand alongside Manar Al Moneef, Chief Investment Officer of NEOM, who has been traveling the world promoting the futuristic mega-project’s investment opportunities.

The Gulf’s hot capital markets are also on the agenda with Sarah Al Suhaimi, Chair of the Board of Saudi Tadawul Group slated to speak. From the industry side, Fahad Al-Dhubaib, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Market Analysis of Saudi Aramco, and executives from Alat, Saudi Arabia’s new manufacturing company backed by the Public Investment Fund, will be there, including CEO Amit Midha and corporate development head Brian Rogove. 

From the wider region, and likely to tackle themes stemming from the war in Gaza, are Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan; Eugene Kandel, Chairman of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange; and Jon Medved, Founder and CEO of Israeli venture capital fund OurCrowd; as well as Lebanese entrepreneur Ibrahim Al Husseini, Founder and Managing Partner of Full Cycle, a climate restoration investment fund.  

With Dubai soaked from another late-season storm, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar Al Olama mounted the stage at the annual Capital Market Summit on Thursday wearing rubber sandals.

Before delivering a peek into the country’s AI future, the minister had to navigate his way to the correct location at Dubai’s Madinat Jumeirah Conference and Events Centre as the main stage was damaged by rain.

Addressing how AI will affect the world of finance, Al Olama offered three predictions.

No. 1: Stronger firewalls will be erected to limit the amount of information that can be freely scraped from the internet. No. 2: Investors will see the rise of “artisanal” large language models to guide them through such thickets as hedging, ETFs and shariah-compliant lending. No. 3. Overuse of AI will lead to a “big catastrophic financial event.”

Roaming the conference halls was one business executive from Hong Kong who was seeking connections for big tech and EV clients back in China. With an eye toward potential dual listings, she noted that Chinese companies have yet to go public on the Dubai Financial Market, but they are seeing opportunities reminiscent of the go-go days of China’s biggest city. “Dubai in 2024 is Shanghai in 2004,” she said.

Heavy rain, wind and lightning hit the UAE overnight, with flooding on roads in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and trees uprooted in some areas. Dubai International Airport canceled 13 flights and intercity bus services have been suspended. Schools held classes online while students stayed home and many businesses allowed employees to work remotely.

The latest downpours come as the emirates, particularly Dubai, are still recovering from extreme weather that brought record rain and flooding two weeks ago.

Dubai’s stock exchange is introducing a new platform called “The Arena” that allows companies to tap into the growing global market for private credit and gives venture capital firms the ability to sell shares in startups they own.

Using technology developed for Nasdaq, the Dubai Financial Market’s latest project targets family conglomerates, VC funds, and small and medium-sized enterprises, the exchange said in a statement on Wednesday.

Companies raising money through The Arena will have the ability to impose access limitations, such as restricting sales to institutional investors, employees or family members.

“Arena is designed to facilitate seamless processes, including due diligence, book building, brokered trades, and settlement, fundamentally reshaping the landscape of investment accessibility and efficiency,” DFM CEO Hamed Ali said.

BlackRock has secured a deal with Saudi Arabia to introduce a multi-class investment firm in the kingdom with a $5 billion anchor investment from the Public Investment Fund.

The world’s biggest money manager will open BlackRock Riyadh Investment Management with the aim of attracting foreign investment to both the kingdom and the wider region – while building up Saudi capital markets through the funds it manages.

The new Riyadh outpost is the latest in a flood of interest from money managers all vying for a piece of the deep-pocketed and increasingly active Gulf sovereign wealth funds.

“We are excited to build on the deep partnership we have developed with PIF over many years to launch this first-of-its-kind international investment management platform in Saudi Arabia,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in a statement. “Saudi Arabia has become an increasingly attractive destination for international investment . . . and we are pleased to offer investors from around the world the opportunity to take part.”