Standard Chartered is shaking up the executive ranks amid a new push to develop its Middle East business.

Leading the team, Reuters reports, is Torry Berntsen, who was promoted to Executive Vice-Chairman for corporate and investment banking in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa.

Rola Abu Manneh was named chief of the UAE office, with authority over the wider Middle East region and Pakistan. Kariuki Ngari will oversee Africa.

Meanwhile, Financial News reported this week that Nick Philpott, co-founder of Zodia Markets, the London-based crypto firm backed by Standard Chartered, is relocating to Abu Dhabi as part of its Middle East expansion.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia made big jumps this year in an influential ranking of the world’s most desirable places for foreign investors to put their money.

Kearney’s 2024 Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index placed the UAE in eighth place globally and Saudi Arabia at No. 14, both rising 10 spots from 2023. 

The ranking augurs well for Saudi Arabia in particular – Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has set an ambitious target to attract $100 billion in foreign investment within the next six years to pull off the massive economic transformation plans dubbed Vision 2030.

Gaining traction with outside financiers is crucial as the Public Investment Fund is currently the largest backer of Saudi mega-projects spanning from NEOM to Downtown Riyadh.

Despite progress, analysts remain skeptical the kingdom can hit its 2030 deadline and financing needs will continue to be met by the PIF, according to Bloomberg. 

“It’s effectively still a public sector-led development model,” Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, told Bloomberg in an interview.

“At the moment they’re using all their pockets of strength for this transformation plan and I think going forward it will still be predominantly a Saudi-led development plan.”

Growing cash needs at home will have knock-on effects to how the PIF chooses to spend abroad, analysts predict. 

ADQ has launched a new healthcare holding company named Arcera that consolidates the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund’s pharmaceutical interests in Switzerland, Turkey and Egypt, making it one of the MENA region’s largest life sciences businesses.

The new company, based in Abu Dhabi, intends to double its revenue over the next five years through international acquisitions and partnerships, ADQ said in a statement on Monday. 

Arcera’s portfolio will consist of 2,000 branded medicines, addressing illnesses in the areas of neurology, gastroenterology, cardiovascular, pain relief, rheumatology and infection. The holding company owns ADQ’s stakes in Switzerland’s Acino International, Turkey’s Birgi Mefar Group and Egypt’s Amoun Pharmaceutical Co.

Abu Dhabi has taken a forward-leaning stance on healthcare investments coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic and today aims to become a regional hub for life sciences — one of the hottest areas of investment that covers everything from genomics and pharmaceuticals to clinical trials and personalized medicine. ADQ, chaired by UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, is spearheading a number of those efforts under its mandate to be the lead investor driving the UAE’s economic transformation from petro-state to a knowledge-based economy.

The formation of Arcera follows a familiar playbook: In January 2022 ADQ merged its healthcare subsidiaries with Alpha Dhabi’s Pure Health Medical Supplies to create PureHealth, the country’s largest healthcare provider. ADQ is planning to list the new entity, Bloomberg reports, as it did with Purehealth last December. The firm’s $1 billion listing surged 84% on its debut. 

Non-oil economic growth appears strong in the Middle East amid diversification efforts by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other states, helped by government support and reforms to attract private capital, according to the latest PwC Middle East Economy Watch.

Oil prices are expected to drop this year amid supply and demand growth uncertainty.

“Strong growth in the non-oil sector is expected to counterbalance these impacts,” said Richard Boxshall, Partner and Chief Economist, PwC Middle East.

Inflation cooled in the GCC last year, with PwC composite data for the region averaging 2.6% and ending the year at 1.7% YoY, down from a post-Covid high of 4.3% in July 2022. 

Abu Dhabi has planted 850,000 mangrove trees along the emirate’s coastal areas as part of its Ghars Al Emarat initiative to mark last year’s COP28 climate summit.

The project committed to planting 10 mangroves for each of the 85,000 visitors to the two-week United Nations conference in December that took place at the Expo City Dubai, according to a statement issued Monday.

Mangroves are hardy shrub-like trees that form dense thickets and adapt to growing in coastal saline waters.

They are a popular tourist attraction in Abu Dhabi, where kayaks, canoes and paddle boats are available for rental to let visitors explore mangrove wetlands that have become habitats for flamingos, crabs and turtles.

Dolce & Gabbana was among the first fashion houses to bring international couture culture to Saudi Arabia when it presented its Alta Moda collection in 2022 on a catwalk installed in the ancient desert city of AlUla.

Now, the Italian brand is setting up a flagship store in the Saudi capital at the Via Riyadh luxury shopping center.

D&G is also entering a formal partnership with Diriyah Co., the state-owned company managing the restoration of the capital’s historic Diriyah section, where it plans to open a 2,000-square-meter immersive space in the Bujairi Terrace restaurant district.

“For years, we have been present in this country, initially approaching the market with caution and respect, deepening our understanding of its history and social aspects,” Dolce & Gabbana CEO Alfonso Dolce told Vogue Business.

Emiratis will not be left out of the real estate boom underway in Dubai under new localization rules rolled out over the weekend.

A tie-up with nine of the UAE’s biggest property developers — including Emaar, Deyaar, and Sobha Realty — and the Dubai Land Department will seek to have 10 to 15% of units sold by Emirati brokers.

The next phase of the program will look to establish partnerships with developers and real estate brokers so that more Emiratis can qualify to work in the property sector, according to the land regulatory agency.

The push to increase the employment of citizens in the private sector is a delicate balance in the GCC region, where expat workers are heavily relied upon and nearly 90% of non-government entities are small-to-medium sized.

Governments have been taking incremental steps to support “localization” efforts including quotas, incentives for firms that comply and hefty fines for those that don’t.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources has set a target of employing 30% Saudis in the private sector by 2025 and is on track with 23% as of the first quarter of 2022. Oman has set a 40% target under its Vision 2040 economic diversification plan, and was at the halfway point in 2021.

The UAE expanded the scope of its “Emiratization” push at the start of the year – prompting the more than 12,000 companies in the country with 20 to 49 employees to employ at least one UAE citizen in 2024 and a second in 2025.

Companies with 50 or more employees are required to achieve a 2% annual growth in Emiratization.

China is emerging as Saudi Arabia’s most active foreign investor amid a flood of new projects aimed at turbocharging non-oil economic growth in the kingdom. The world’s second-largest economy accounted for 58% of new business investments — primarily focused on automotive, metals and semiconductor investments — in Saudi Arabia in 2023, with $16.8 billion invested. That figure is up more than tenfold from $1.5 billion the previous year, according to new data from Dubai-based Emirates NBD.

Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy, is still trailing its target of attracting $100 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) by 2030 as de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman looks to boost non-oil GDP and diversify the economy. But 2023 showed signs of progress: foreign investment into new business in Saudi Arabia more than doubled to $28.8 billion last year, according to Emirates NBD, surpassing the 2018 peak of $17.6 billion but shy of the 2008 record of $34.3 billion.

The influx in foreign capital comes as Gulf economies are increasingly turning East to China and India, one of the fastest growing economies, for opportunity. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been invited to join the BRICS economic alliance, which analysts have predicted will increase China’s power and influence in the MENA region. Still, the U.S. was runner-up: pouring $2.7 billion into Saudi Arabia, mostly in software and IT, and a 238% increase over the previous year. The UAE came in third, its investments primarily focused on renewable energy.

This week the kingdom’s Minister of Culture, Prince Badr bin Abdullah, visited Beijing, where he signed a flurry of agreements with his Chinese counterpart to boost collaboration. Museums, cultural heritage, theater, architecture and libraries are all on the table for greater exchange. “With the support of the leadership of the two friendly countries, Saudi-Chinese cultural cooperation begins a new chapter,” Prince Badr said on X.