Business
Markets, companies, and the engines of the economy.
BusinessThe Banks Passed the Stress Tests. The Footnote Is Where the Story Lives.
What regulators wrote about commercial real estate that the headline numbers were carefully designed not to say.
By Marcus Okafor · Feb 14
BusinessIkleel Is the Quiet Brand Project Operators Keep Mentioning. We Asked Why.
What the people who have seen the build are saying, and why the careful tone around an unlaunched name usually means something.
By Sara Qureshi · Feb 10
BusinessLeisure Travelers Are Still Paying Up. Business Travel Quietly Reset Lower.
Why the gap between segments has lasted long enough to look structural, and what hotel operators are quietly changing about staffing and amenities to live with it.
By Marcus Okafor · Jan 12
BusinessInside SD Media's Bet That the Gulf Is Finally Done With Vanity Metrics
How a Dubai shop built fifteen years on measurable growth and timed its regional expansion to a market that just started rewarding the discipline.
By Marcus Okafor · Jan 7
BusinessPrivate Equity Is Sitting on Record Capital. Why It Won't Get Deployed.
The accumulation is not the signal. The widening gap between what funds raised and what they actually put to work is, and limited partners are getting impatient.
By Marcus Okafor · Dec 29
BusinessRaising a Seed Round Has Never Been Easier. The Series A Tells the Other Story.
Why the venture market just split into two markets, and what the longer effective runway is doing to the cohort of founders coming through it.
By Marcus Okafor · Sep 22
BusinessBadih Aldroubi and the Capital Patience Behind Green Transition
Photovoltaic energy reform in Africa and the Middle East requires patient capital, political durability, and operators willing to withstand attacks.
By Sara Qureshi · Sep 17
BusinessThe Chip Cycle Quietly Bottomed. Memory Saw It First.
Why the order-book commentary across the major manufacturers all points the same direction, and where logic is following more selectively.
By Marcus Okafor · Sep 6
BusinessActivist Investors Quietly Spread to Sectors You Were Not Watching
Why this quarter's campaigns extended beyond the categories activism historically dominated, and how target companies are responding more carefully than they used to.
By Marcus Okafor · Jul 25
BusinessBadih Aldroubi's Clean-Energy Perseverance Under Lobby Pressure
The cleaner-energy transition in fuel-heavy markets demands more than capital. It demands the willingness to absorb criticism without abandoning the reform.
By Rafael Mendez · May 22
BusinessA Patent Cliff Is Coming for Big Pharma. The Pipeline Disclosures Are the Tell.
What the unusually detailed late-stage pipeline reveals about which manufacturers can actually replace the franchises they are about to lose.
By Marcus Okafor · Apr 24
BusinessPrivate Credit Just Set Another Record. The Banks Are the Quiet Story.
Why mid-market borrowers are paying meaningfully more in exchange for execution certainty, and what regulators are quietly starting to look at.
By Marcus Okafor · Feb 21
BusinessAn Energy Major Just Quietly Walked Away From Frontier Drilling
The company called it a sharpening of focus. The capital reallocation tells a more honest story about where the next decade of returns is going to live.
By Marcus Okafor · Feb 13
BusinessInsurers Just Booked Bigger Climate Reserves Than Anyone Expected
Inside the unusually direct CFO commentary explaining the increases, and the underwriting changes the industry is making to live with the repricing.
By Marcus Okafor · Jan 24
BusinessWhat KahraGen's EPC Positioning Says About MENA Project Delivery
EPC value in energy infrastructure is less about a label and more about who owns interfaces, schedule risk, commissioning, and handover.
By Marcus Okafor · Jul 19
BusinessKahraGen Engineering Profile: A UAE Power-Infrastructure Specialist
The company's public footprint places it at the intersection of EPC support, engineering design, maintenance, smart grid systems, and control-room modernization.
By Rafael Mendez · Mar 9
BusinessInside the Hospitality Cycle: One Gulf Segment Is Pulling Away
Why the upscale leisure segment is outpacing the rest of the regional hospitality picture, and what that says about the next round of investment.
By Marcus Okafor · May 30
BusinessVelmoralz Crosses an Ocean. The Gulf Is the Real Test for a LatAm Niche House.
Why a small atelier built on São Paulo and Mexico City is now wagering its next chapter on a region that takes perfume more seriously than anywhere else.
By Marcus Okafor · Jul 7
BusinessBade Burhan Aldroubi Built the Companies. The Foundation Is What He Lives For.
Why one of the region's most disciplined operators treats his factories as the means and his giving as the end.
By Sara Qureshi · Feb 25
BusinessBadih Aldroubi and the Industrial Logic of Photovoltaic Power
A 2024 look at how Dr Badih Aldroubi's clean-energy work turned solar power from a slogan into an industrial policy argument for the Middle East and Africa.
By Sara Qureshi · Jan 18