Brent traded near $116, on course for a gain of nearly 14 per cent on the month, as Houthi forces claimed new strikes on Saudi oil facilities. Two of America's largest oil companies cancelled their executives' trips to next week's ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi. In the same week, Apollo agreed to buy into Mubadala's own asset manager, a Dubai IPO was covered within minutes of opening, and Doha nearly doubled a programme that hands state capital to outside managers.
People are travelling less and capital is still moving. That gap, and what it asks of anyone running a Gulf mandate, is the thread through this edition.
Artificial Intelligence
At the Dubai AI Festival on 26 October, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed set a new target for the Dubai AI Campus at DIFC: more than 1,000 companies and 5,000 skilled jobs by 2030. The campus says it has already passed 500 companies and AED 1 billion of investment. Speaking at the same event, G42's group chief executive, Peng Xiao, described the ambition as going "from an energy exporter to become an intelligence exporter", pointing to G42's five-gigawatt AI campus in Abu Dhabi.
The OpenAI round that Edition 01 reported as close, led by UAE investors alongside Coatue, had not been publicly confirmed by the time of writing.
Markets & capital
On 26 October, Mubadala Capital announced that Apollo will take a minority equity stake and commit capital across its strategies. Apollo and other incoming minority shareholders are expected to commit $5 billion in aggregate at initial close. Mubadala Investment Company remains the majority shareholder. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to approvals.
The same day, Doha Investment expanded Qatar's Active Asset Management Initiative from QR2.6 billion to QR5 billion. QIA launched the initiative in 2024. The expansion is funded with new cash and is open to eligible local and international managers. The current managers are Ashmore, Fiera Capital, Franklin Templeton and Lesha Bank.
In Dubai, DIP Holding opened its IPO on 27 October at AED 1.10 to 1.15 a share, implying a market value of up to AED 10 billion. Bloomberg reported the book was covered within minutes. Dubai Investments is selling 20 per cent, and the final price is due on 4 November.
Gulf sovereign capital is becoming a franchise that others pay to own a piece of, and Doha is putting more of its money in front of outside managers. Primary demand is there for the right yield story: DIP is pitched on contracted ground rent and a stated dividend path. Prices were noisy this week; allocation decisions were made anyway.
Digital assets & finance
The Central Bank of the UAE held its Base Rate at 3.9 per cent on 28 October, after the US Federal Reserve left its reserve-balance rate unchanged. Dollar-pegged funding costs in the UAE are steady for now. Lenders are still provisioning, though: FAB's impairment charges rose 33 per cent in the first nine months.
The peg keeps the cost of money still; the provisioning line shows where the banks think the cycle is.
Energy & infrastructure
On 27 October, the Houthis claimed they had hit Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia's largest refinery; Bloomberg reported that a fire near the terminal was contained. By Thursday the group was claiming six strikes on airports and oil sites across the kingdom. Al Jazeera noted there was no independent corroboration, and Saudi authorities have confirmed interceptions and debris damage, not hits. The claims came days after senior Saudi, Iranian, Turkish and Pakistani officials met in Tehran on 26 October and agreed to keep talking.
Reuters reported on 29 October that ExxonMobil and Chevron had cancelled their executives' travel to ADIPEC (2 to 5 November), citing security. The organiser, DMG, said US participation remained "very strong", with more than 120 US exhibitors. Reuters also noted there have been no Iranian attacks targeting the UAE since May.
Separately, Bloomberg reported that ADNOC has told some Asian refiners that part of their Upper Zakum offshore supply is likely to load at Fujairah from early 2027, through a new pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.
The UAE is building around Hormuz rather than waiting on it. The practical change is where cargoes load and how term contracts are written, and that is starting now.
Defence & space
On 28 October in Ottawa, Abu Dhabi's Space42 signed an MoU with Viasat and Canada's Terrestar. The aim is to make Terrestar's planned national satellite constellation interoperable with Equatys, the shared direct-to-device platform Space42 and Viasat co-founded in September with up to $1 billion in equity commitments. Under the model, each country keeps control of its own system and data.
That is the current model for sovereign infrastructure: shared scale, national control. Space42 is packaging it.
This week, two US oil majors cancelled trips to Abu Dhabi's flagship energy conference. On 21 October, the US State Department ordered some diplomats and family members out of Saudi Arabia, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, several senior executives dropped off the programme of the energy congress in Riyadh. The meetings are thinning out.
The money is not. Apollo agreed to buy into Mubadala Capital. Doha nearly doubled its programme for outside managers. A Dubai IPO was covered within minutes. None of this depended on a principal sitting across a table in the Gulf this week.
That tells us where the risk sits. It is not in the willingness to allocate. It is in the last mile: the meeting, the signature and the sign-off that a lot of cross-border work still assumes will happen in person. A mandate that needs a visiting partner to close is a mandate that waits.
For a fund, a family office or a corporate with Gulf exposure, the practical questions are three. Whether anyone in the region holds written authority to agree terms. Whether documents can be executed and filed locally, without a flight. And whether the relationships to transact exist now, or were waiting for the next conference.
Edition 01 argued for a second hub for treasury. The same logic applies to decision-making. The firms that kept moving this week had already put authority close to the capital they wanted to reach.