BOARDING CALL ✈

Welcome aboard, and welcome to the Departure Brief

If you’re reading this in the cab to the airport, in the lounge, or halfway through boarding EK819, you’re exactly where we imagined you’d be.

Departure Brief was built for consultants in the Middle East who want to start their week a little sharper, without digging through the noise of the countless news sources out there. Every Monday, we’ll bring you a fast, focused update on what actually matters for you, plus a few tools and insights that will make you look good in front of your client and manager, director, partner… whoever’s reviewing your slides. And if you’ve had enough of airplanes, we’ve got you covered with the latest exit opportunities.

Enjoy your read!

SECTOR SCAN 🔭

Your weekly rundown of the most relevant business news in the region - for the sectors that matter to you

Public Sector & Government

• Qatar is expected to invest $4 bn in a tourism mega project in Egypt’s North Coast; 240,000 square meter of resorts, luxury homes, malls and a yacht Marina - looks like this is becoming a trend after Abu Dhabi’s investment in Ras el Hekma; are the Saudis next to invest? (Full story)

• Saudi Arabia signed investment deals worth $6.4 bn with Syria in sectors spanning telecoms, real estate, agriculture, and fintech to accelerate post-war reconstruction - another positive step after DP World’s announcement of its investment to develop the port of Tartus last week (Full story)

Energy

• Saudi’s ACWA Power signs multiple MOUs to export renewable electricity and green hydrogen to Europe - from largest oil exporter to largest clean energy exporters? Well, it is one of the stated goals of Saudi Vision 2030 (Full story)

Financial Services

• Saudi’s outstanding bank loans reached $845 bn in May, an annual increase of 16.3% mainly driven by corporate loans - a clear emerging trend showing how banks in the Kingdom are shifting from consumer finance to funding large projects and enterprises (Full story)

• Islamic investment deals in the UAE reached $1.53 bn in one year, making the country second in the world in terms of value after Indonesia (Full story)

• Deed, a new DIFC-licensed platform, was launched allowing investors to purchase fractional shares in Dubai’s residential real estate market - check it out if you want to invest in Dubai real estate without breaking the bank; minimum investment value is AED 500 (Full story)

Technology, Media, and Telecommunication

• The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Agency (SDAIA) launched the National Artifical Intelligence Index to assess the maturity of AI implementation across government entities - now this should trigger a few RFPs for us (Full story)

• Saudis make their first advanced electronic chips at KACST, a big advancement in the Kingom’s efforts to advance the semiconductor ecosystem - a Saudi Nvidia incoming? (Full story)

Transport & Logistics

• A new Dammam-based low-cost airline was granted license to launch in KSA; the new airline will be a joint venture between UAE’s Air Arabia, KUN Investment Holding, and Nesma - a new option for those staffed on Aramco (Full story)

• Abu Dhabi Airports handled more than 15.8 millon passengers in the first half of 2025, up 13.1% year on year - that’s quite impressive considering all the airspace disruptions we had this year (Full story)

Consumer Products & Retail

• Al Futtaim will acquire 49.95% Saudi’s Cenomic Retail in a deal worth $667 mn dollars giving it a valuation of of $1.3bn, a ~40% premium on Cenomi’s current $0.9bn market cap - not sure who did the DD for this one, but either they messed up, or they know something we don’t (Full story)

• UAE will introduce a new tiered sugar tax for beverages in 2026 - price of Pepsi about to go up! (Full story)

• Indian jewellers Titan will buy 67% stake in Dubai’s Damas at a valuation of $238mn - make jewelery, grow your footprint, sell to an Indian company for $200m+… exit plan? (Full story)

Other

• Saudi football clubs Al Ansar, Al Kholood, and Al Zulfi were offered in a first wave of Saudi football club IPOs (Full story)

THE EXIT ROW 💼

Your bosses might not like this section, but that’s alright. Every week, we’ll provide you with a list of curated job openings for any of you that are tired of the travel routine and looking to have a life again after 7 PM - includes opportunities for all levels

UAE

• Talabat | Sr. Specialist Growth & Strategy - Private Label | Dubai (Apply here)

• Amazon | Sr. Program Manager, Last Mile, Strategy & Performance | Dubai (Apply here)

• Keeta | Senior Strategy Associate | Dubai (Apply here)

• Mastercard | Managing Consultant, Advisory & Consulting Services, Strategy & Transformation | Dubai (Apply here)

• Revolut | Strategy & Operations Manager (Credit) | Dubai (Apply here)

• Al Futtaim Automotive | Transformation Manager | Dubai (Apply here)

• Dubai Future Foundation | Strategy & Insight Analyst | Dubai (Apply here)

• RELX | Senior Manager Market Strategy | Dubai (Apply here)

• KONE | Manager, Strategy Development & Market Intelligence | Dubai (Apply here)

• AD Ports Group | Senior Specialist Strategy | Abu Dhabi (Apply here)

KSA

• Amazon | Head of Marketplace Strategy | Riyadh (Apply here)

• Mastercard | Consultant Strategy & Transformation | Riyadh (Apply here)

• Keeta | Sales Operations Strategy | Riyadh (Apply here)

• The Arab Investment Company | Strategy Manager | Riyadh (Apply here)

• Siemens Energy | Strategy & Business Development Manager | Dammam (Apply here)

Qatar

• Qatar Airways | Head of Catering Commercial Strategy | Doha (Apply here)

CABIN DEEP DIVE 🔎

Every week, we give a focused look on a topic, news, trend that is shaping the region; no fluff, just the insights you need.

GCC AIRLINES - A SMOOTH FLIGHT FOR UAE CARRIERS AND SAUDIA BUT SOME TURBULENCE FOR THE OTHERS

After the recent announcements of Wizz Air exiting Abu Dhabi and the launch of the new Dammam-based airline, I thought it would be interesting to have a quick look on how the industry is doing in the region.

Overall, the market is doing well. The Middle East is the second fastest-growing aviation market in the world and capacity is up 5% since 2019. But performance is mixed across the region’s main airlines. Here is a breakdown:

• Emirates: still the king of civil aviation, Emirates is the most profitable airline in the world with a profit of $5.8 bn in 2024. It also recorded 67 billion revenue passenger kilometers (RPK - definition here) in Q1 2025, a 5% year on year increase.

• Etihad: the Abu Dhabi-based airline is the fastest-growing airline in the region with passenger traffic growing 32% to 18.5 million in 2024 - they’re definitely doing something right

• Qatar Airways: good performance overall with a 18% capacity growth compared to 2019, but Q1 2025 has been a bit muted with a drop of 2% in RPK - highlighted as “a bit of a concern” by industry experts

• Saudia: second largest airline of the region in number of passenger, it also recorded a strong performance in Q1 2025 with a 7.2% year on year increase in number of passengers - it also ranked first globally for punctuality in March and June

• Oman Air: they’re one of the big laggers here, with a sharp drop in RPK in Q1 2025 (-13%), while cutting its fleet size by 29% to reduce losses

• Kuwait Air: also struggling with a -14% drop in RPK in Q1 2025, as their chairman ruled out the possibility of making any profit for the next two years

• Riyadh Air: yeah what’s up with Riyadh Air? they were orginally supposed to launch in Q1 2025 but got pushed back because of plane delivery delays from Boeing; latest we heard was a new launch date to Q3 2025, but doesn’t look like it’s happening either. Q4 maybe?

LIFE UPGRADE PICK 💎

In this section, we pick one product or service that would make your life easier, or better; and we review it for you.

DEED, YOUR ACCESS TO DUBAI REAL ESTATE WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK

So the launch of DEED came up in one the news on the sector scan, and I thought this could be quite relevant to some of us.

Unless you spend everything at brunch at Iris during the weekends, as a consultant, you should be able to put some money aside quite early in your career. Then the question comes, what do you do with those savings? I’m sure at this point you’ve heard the golden word: diversification. So you put a bit in stocks, maybe gold, crypto, memecoins if you’re crazy, etc. then what? Real estate should be a no-brainer; it protects you from inflation and provides you steady cash flow from rent. But here’s the catch: you typically need a big sum of capital for that down payment, and that kills your ability to diversify. Enter DEED, the new platform that fractionalises Dubai residential properties so you can own a slice of a home from just AED 500.

You might have heard of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs); DEED is NOT a REIT. A REIT is a company that invests in a large pool of real estate, and you, as a REIT owner, you own a piece of that company and not the real estate they invest in directly. With Deed, you can browse the exact properties you want to buy and become a direct fractional owner of that property. I’ve tried their platform and it’s actually very easy to use.

Now, we all know that the real estate market in Dubai has been very hot lately, and we all heard that it might be time for a little cool down. But the whole point here is about diversification and steady cash flow.

Learn more here

And that’s a wrap…

Thank you for being onboard the Departure Brief this week. We want to hear from you so if you have any feedback, just hit the reply button. If you liked the issue, forward it to one or two colleagues so that we can grow this community, we would greately appreciate it 😊

Have a safe flight, an amazing week, and see you next Monday!