Bahrain Finance Correspondent, Gulf Business Review
Dana Al Khalifa covers Bahrain's financial-services economy, regulation and fintech, distinguishing the kingdom's domestic market from the regional business booked through Manama.
The beat is reported from official statistics, regulator publications, company filings and named institutional research. Forecasts, commitments and completed outcomes are labelled separately.
Dana's Bahrain coverage keeps domestic financial activity separate from regional business booked through Manama. That distinction matters in banking, payments and fintech, where a company can serve a wide Gulf market while the local employment, licensing or balance-sheet effect remains much narrower.
Her regulation work follows the same principle of precision. Licensing, consultation, rule changes and commercial adoption are treated as different stages, with regulator material used to establish what a financial-services company is actually permitted or required to do.
Qatar's LNG model was built around scale at Ras Laffan. The Iran war has exposed the other side of that concentration: unlike Saudi crude, Qatari LNG has no economically viable pipeline bypass around the Strait of Hormuz.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed's Riyadh visit was the first senior Emirati trip since a public rift sharpened. It does not settle the rivalry, but it reopens the channel needed for capital, logistics and energy coordination.
Middle Eastern crude exports reached 16.3 million barrels a day in September, the highest since the Iran war began. The rebound shows the value of alternative routes and operational adaptation, but it does not remove the security premium.
The new Dubai Mobility Labs facility combines 248 test scenarios, public-road access and independent operation by Dekra. Its importance is not another robotaxi trial, but a repeatable route from testing to regulatory approval.
MASNA Ventures wants to lift its fund ceiling to $150 million and accelerate unmanned surface and underwater systems. The strategy could fill procurement gaps faster, but localisation must mean engineering control rather than final assembly.
Cross-border institutions add scale, but domestic GDP, booked assets and customer location should remain separate.
Capital, liquidity, credit quality and payments activity need to be read together in a regional financial centre.
Regulatory approval enables a product; customers, transaction volume and unit economics decide whether it becomes a business.
Assets booked in Manama can finance borrowers elsewhere, making domestic GDP an incomplete denominator for the sector.
The domestic market is compact, while finance, aluminium and services connect Manama to customers well beyond the kingdom.
Financial corporations contributed 17.2% of constant-price GDP in 2024; regional assets booked in Manama are a different measure.
Core42 arranged $550 million of non-equity-dilutive trade finance with HSBC to fund compute deployments in the US and Europe. The structure reflected the growing capital intensity of sovereign AI infrastructure.
Tamara secured a Sharia-compliant asset-backed facility of up to $2.4 billion from Goldman Sachs, Citi and Apollo funds. The financing matched a consumer-credit business with institutional debt rather than relying on equity to fund receivables.
ADQ's ownership reached 63.16% of Aramex after its tender offer, including shares held by AD Ports Group. The acquisition connected air, sea and land logistics assets inside a broader Abu Dhabi platform.
Stargate UAE was announced as a 1GW cluster within a planned 5GW UAE-US AI campus, with the first 200MW expected in 2026. Khazna's role in building the physical infrastructure placed it at the centre of the UAE's compute strategy.
Masdar completed its 100% acquisition of Greece's TERNA ENERGY after first buying 70%, creating a large European platform for renewables and storage. The transaction had an enterprise value around €3.2 billion.
Tabby raised $160 million at a $3.3 billion valuation after annualised transaction volume passed $10 billion. The company had added a card, subscription product and the Tweeq wallet, reducing dependence on checkout BNPL alone.
Presight agreed to acquire 51% of AIQ while ADNOC retained 49%, giving the listed analytics company a controlling position in an energy-AI specialist and ADNOC a stake in Presight.
ADQ's Egypt investment combined $24 billion for development rights with the conversion of $11 billion of deposits into investment. The scale made the transaction relevant not only to real estate but to Egypt's external financing and the UAE's regional investment strategy.
Tamara raised $340 million at a $1 billion valuation led by SNB Capital and Sanabil Investments. The round was designed to move the business beyond BNPL into shopping, payments and broader financial services.
Tabby raised $200 million in Series D funding at a valuation above $1.5 billion, with more than $6 billion of annualised transaction volume. The company explicitly linked the round to a planned Saudi IPO.
Core42 was formed from G42 Cloud, Inception and Injazat, combining hyperscale infrastructure, applied AI and systems integration. The reorganisation reflected a belief that sovereign AI would be sold as an integrated stack.
Presight raised about AED1.822 billion, or $496 million, in its ADX listing after demand reached AED94.9 billion. The IPO gave Gulf investors a listed pure-play exposure to big-data analytics and AI.
After its ownership was reorganised under ADNOC, TAQA and Mubadala, Masdar targeted more than 100GW of renewable capacity and one million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030. The ambition required acquisitions and project finance on a different scale.
Foodics raised $170 million in Series C funding led by Prosus and Sanabil Investments. The round financed expansion but also reflected the company's move from SaaS toward payments and merchant financial services.
Foodics acquired POSRocket in its first acquisition, adding customers and stronger positions in Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan. The deal showed restaurant software in MENA beginning to consolidate around multi-market platforms.
Etisalat and G42 agreed to combine twelve UAE data centres under Khazna with plans for roughly 300MW of capacity. The transaction consolidated the physical layer that would later support Abu Dhabi's much larger AI ambitions.