DIWAN

Studies & Intelligence

Intelligence with context. Foresight that shapes decisions. The DIWAN register publishes commissioned studies, briefings, and market intelligence across sectors and jurisdictions.

Briefings room Membership

StreamsAll Trade & Capital 48 Law & Regulation 22 Country Files 181 Demand & Buyers 38 Platforms & Growth 154 Brand & Positioning 2 Commodities 21 Business 43 Technology 159 Cyber Security 3

GeographyAll

United Arab Emirates 22

Antigua and Barbuda 1

Bosnia and Herzegovina 1

Brazil 1

British Virgin Islands 1

Central African Republic 1

Hong Kong SAR, China 1

Korea, Dem. People's Rep. 1

Northern Mariana Islands 1

Sint Maarten (Dutch part) 1

St. Kitts and Nevis 1

St. Lucia 1

St. Martin (French part) 1

St. Vincent and the Grenadines 1

Sudan 1

Suriname 1

Sweden 1

Syrian Arab Republic 1

Trinidad and Tobago 1

Tunisia 1

Turkey 1

Turkmenistan 1

Turks and Caicos Islands 1

Virgin Islands (U.S.) 1

West Bank and Gaza 1

Yemen, Rep. 1

Zambia 1

Business

10 of 196 items

Photo · janith devinda / Unsplash

RNK-DIWAN-074Legal review

LEX · 01 OCT 2026

What the Gulf Actually Asks: Incorporation, Directors' Duties and Exit Costs in the GCC

A demand-driven legal review answering the questions readers put to the platform most — mainland vs ADGM vs DIFC, what boards owe, and what employment exits cost

Reader demand on the platform clusters on three questions: where to incorporate in the GCC, what directors owe once incorporated, and what employment exits cost. This study answers all three — a six-door comparison of UAE mainland, ADGM, DIFC, Saudi Arabia, QFC and Bahrain/Oman; the ADGM directors'-duties framework in plain language; and the notice and end-of-service formulas for DIFC, ADGM and the UAE mainland — with indicative costs and a decision playbook by profile.

≈46%SHARE OF READER QUESTIONS ABOUT FORMATION & JURISDICTION CHOICE

≈ USD 1,000ADGM TECH START-UP LICENCE, PER YEAR

14 daysDIFC NOTICE FOR MOST TENURES (3 MONTHS–5 YEARS)

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Photo · Unsplash

RNK-DIWAN-050Legal review

LEX · 05 SEPT 2026

Where the Gulf Incorporates — The Formation Edition

The GCC's dominant legal question, answered for 2026: mainland vs financial centre vs Saudi entry — venues, costs, tax and the new rulebook

Nearly half of everything readers ask a GCC legal platform is one question in different clothes: where should this company live? This study answers it for 2026 — a year in which DIFC, ADGM and the QFC all posted record intake simultaneously, the UAE mainland gained venture-style share structures and statutory redomiciliation, Saudi Arabia replaced foreign-investment licensing with registration, and a 15% domestic minimum tax quietly harmonised the top end of the market. Includes a venue scoreboard, cost and tax tables, the 2026 legal rails, and a decision playbook for five founder archetypes.

≈45%SHARE OF PLATFORM READER DEMAND THAT IS FORMATION / JURISDICTION CHOICE

8,844DIFC ACTIVE COMPANIES AT END-2025 (RECORD YEAR: 1,924 NEW, +28%)

13,353ADGM ACTIVE LICENCES IN Q1 2026 (OPERATIONAL ENTITIES +34.5% Y/Y)

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Photo · Alexander Faé / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-007Feasibility

FORFAIT · 26 JUL 2026

The Regulator Shopping Guide: Fintech Licensing Across ADGM, DIFC, SAMA and QFC

Capital floors, real timelines and a decision matrix for payments, lending and digital-asset builders choosing a Gulf licence in 2026

There is no GCC passport: each licence buys one market, and the capital floors for a payments permission span roughly 150x between the cheapest and costliest sourced track (AED 100,000 for a CBUAE Category IV permission to AED 15 million for a stored-value facility). This study benchmarks the five regulators a Gulf fintech founder can realistically shop - ADGM FSRA, DIFC DFSA, SAMA, QFCRA and CBUAE - across licensing tracks for payments, lending and crypto, with sourced fees, capital requirements and authorisation timelines, and closes with a decision matrix mapping seven common business models to a primary and fallback regulator.

~150xSPAN OF PAYMENTS-TRACK MINIMUM CAPITAL ACROSS THE FIVE REGULATORS (CBUAE CAT IV TO UAE SVF)

4-6 monthsFASTEST SOURCED AUTHORISATION WINDOW (ADGM, SIMPLE PERMISSION)

USD 150,000DFSA APPLICATION FEE FOR A CRYPTO EXCHANGE OR CLEARING HOUSE LICENCE

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Photo · Veli Yunus Ünal / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-005Feasibility

FORFAIT · 24 JUL 2026

The Quiet Diversification Scorecard: Gulf Non-Oil Exports 2026

UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar measured against the Malaysia standard — what is genuinely scaling, what is statistical noise, and where the investable core sits

2025 delivered record non-oil export headlines across the Gulf — but decomposition shows the UAE's +45.5% is gold-inflated and Saudi Arabia's +18.9% masks a −0.1% fall in domestic-origin shipments. Benchmarked against Malaysia (86.4% manufactured exports; ECI #27 vs UAE #35, Saudi #60, Qatar #83), the genuine convergence is concentrated in petrochemical derivatives and aluminium, both stress-tested by the 2026 Hormuz closure. The study ranks the four scaling sectors and closes with a ranked investable shortlist: downstream polymer conversion, aluminium recycling/rolled products, outside-strait logistics, and selective agri-food platforms.

AED 813.8bnUAE NATIONAL NON-OIL EXPORTS, 2025 — RECORD, +45.5% YOY (GOLD-INFLATED); THE 2031 TARGET HIT FIVE YEARS EARLY

−0.1%SAUDI DOMESTIC-ORIGIN NON-OIL EXPORT GROWTH, 2025 — THE HEADLINE +18.9% WAS RE-EXPORT-DRIVEN

86.4%MALAYSIA'S MANUFACTURED SHARE OF EXPORTS, 2025 — THE BENCHMARK NO GULF STATE APPROACHES

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Photo · Darcey Beau / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-002Feasibility

FORFAIT · 22 JUL 2026

Golden Visas and Beyond: The GCC Residency Economy in 2026

Benchmarking the UAE, Saudi and Qatar residency products against a closing West — and sizing the property, schooling, insurance and advisory economy they feed

Between October 2023 and February 2026 the investment-migration market inverted: Europe withdrew supply while the Gulf productized it. This study benchmarks five class-matched residency products, quantifies the residency-linked economy anchored by Dubai's AED 917bn property year, and maps the 12–24 month regulatory outlook and advisory funnel.

+9,800PROJECTED NET MILLIONAIRE INFLOW TO THE UAE IN 2025 — THE WORLD'S LARGEST (HENLEY & PARTNERS)

AED 917bnDUBAI REAL-ESTATE TRANSACTION VALUE IN 2025 ACROSS 270,000+ DEALS (DLD, VIA ZAWYA)

US$200kQATAR'S NEW PROPERTY-RESIDENCY FLOOR, ANNOUNCED OCTOBER 2025 — THE GCC'S CHEAPEST TICKET (IMI DAILY)

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Photo · Roger Starnes Sr / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-001Feasibility

FORFAIT · 21 JUL 2026

The Gulf Data-Centre Race: Power, Chips and the New Digital Geography

Announced gigawatts, energized megawatts, and who actually captures the AI workloads

The Gulf has announced between 5 and 11 gigawatts of sovereign AI data-centre capacity while roughly 500 megawatts of third-party capacity is live today. This study benchmarks the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar against the two constrained incumbents — Singapore and Ireland — across capacity, power economics, latency position and regulation, and maps who captures which workloads to 2030.

5-11 GWSOVEREIGN AI CAMPUS CAPACITY ANNOUNCED ACROSS THE GCC

~500 MWGCC THIRD-PARTY DATA-CENTRE CAPACITY LIVE TODAY

~20%SHARE OF IRELAND'S METERED ELECTRICITY CONSUMED BY DATA CENTRES

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Photo · Jeffrey Eisen / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-010Masterplan

FORFAIT · 19 JUL 2026

Feeding the Gulf: The Food-Security Investment Map 2026–2030

Where sovereign capital is pulling private money — UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar benchmarked against the Netherlands and Israel, and the four-segment stack priced

Gulf food-security capital has moved upstream: over US$7 billion of verified sovereign and state-linked deals since 2020 now target the grain trade itself, while domestic production consolidates around what survives the desert P&L. This study benchmarks the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar against their two explicit reference systems — the Netherlands and Israel — then prices the four-segment investable stack: greenhouse-first controlled-environment agriculture, sovereign-anchored aquaculture, cash-yielding cold chain, and alternative proteins as a regulatory call option under Abu Dhabi's 2025 halal-integrated novel-food framework. It closes with the four co-investment structures that repeat across every disclosed transaction, and a candid risk register.

US$7bn+VERIFIED SOVEREIGN & STATE-LINKED AGRI-FOOD COMMITMENTS SINCE 2020

>90%SHARE OF UAE FOOD SUPPLY THAT IS IMPORTED

US$23.7BMEA COLD-CHAIN MARKET BY 2034 (FROM US$13.1B IN 2025)

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Photo · Nick Fewings / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-006Masterplan

FORFAIT · 18 JUL 2026

Sovereign AI in the Gulf: Compute, Models and Talent — Who Actually Leads

Announcement versus deployment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — benchmarked against Singapore and France

The Gulf sovereign-AI race has split into three distinct strategies: the UAE is deploying (a gigawatt-class campus physically under construction, chips export-licensed, a US$49bn infrastructure fund closed, and a continuous cadence of shipped models), Saudi Arabia is announcing at the largest scale (6.6GW by 2034) while execution is still early, and Qatar has pivoted to capital-as-strategy, buying exposure rather than building gigawatts. Benchmarked against Singapore and France, the UAE currently leads on execution score; the binding constraint for every programme is US chip-export approval, which has quietly become the real scoreboard.

200 MWFIRST GULF GIGAWATT-CLASS CAMPUS PHASE DUE ONLINE — STARGATE UAE, Q3 2026

6.6 GWHUMAIN ANNOUNCED COMPUTE TARGET BY 2034

US$49bnMGX FUND I CLOSED COMMITMENTS, JULY 2026

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Photo · Tim Broadbent / Unsplash

CMD-DIWAN-003Masterplan

FORFAIT · 17 JUL 2026

The New Silk Routes: How Gulf Aviation Hubs Are Redrawing Global Transit

Dubai leads on volume, Istanbul on network, Doha on premium transfer — and Riyadh is pouring concrete for 120 million passengers by 2030

Four operating super-hubs on the Europe–Asia corridor moved roughly 303 million airport passengers in 2025 — Dubai 95.2M, Istanbul 84.0M, Singapore ~70.0M, Doha 54.3M — while Saudi Arabia builds a fifth designed for 120 million by 2030. This study benchmarks the five class-matched hubs, quantifies the order books that will decide the next decade, and unpacks the stopover-to-stayover economics that turned Dubai transit gravity into 19.59 million overnight visitors in 2025.

95.2MDXB PASSENGERS IN 2025 — BUSIEST INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON EARTH

48%ISTANBUL AIRPORT LONG-HAUL TRANSFER SHARE OF TRAFFIC

120MKING SALMAN INTERNATIONAL DESIGN CAPACITY TARGET BY 2030

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Photo · Zlaťáky.cz / Unsplash

EXT-MENA-AIFDI-01Masterplan

DIWAN · 15 JUL 2026

The Silicon Sovereigns: How Gulf Capital Is Buying Its Way Into the AI Order

Compute, equity and chip diplomacy: an audit of what Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha are actually acquiring in the artificial-intelligence build-out

Between Microsoft's $1.5bn stake in G42 in April 2024 and the $49bn close of Abu Dhabi's MGX fund in July 2026, Gulf sovereign capital moved from the periphery of artificial intelligence to a load-bearing position in its financing. This study benchmarks the Gulf's sovereign AI vehicles against their Singaporean peers and finds that what the sovereigns are buying, in descending order of certainty, is compute, equity and influence — with access to American chips, not capital, as the binding constraint.

$49bnFINAL CLOSE OF MGX'S DEDICATED AI FUND, ANNOUNCED 1 JULY 2026 — THE LARGEST SINGLE AI-FOCUSED INVESTMENT VEHICLE ON RECORD (SOURCE: CNBC, BLOOMBERG)

5 GWPLANNED CAPACITY OF THE STARGATE UAE CAMPUS IN ABU DHABI, THE LARGEST AI COMPUTE CLUSTER ANNOUNCED OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES (SOURCE: OPENAI, G42, SOFTBANK, MAY 2025)

~70,000GB300-CLASS NVIDIA CHIPS COVERED BY THE FIRST-TRANCHE NOVEMBER 2025 US EXPORT AUTHORIZATIONS TO G42 AND HUMAIN; DIWAN AGGREGATION OF TRADE-PRESS TALLIES (SOURCE: US DEPT OF COMMERCE STATEMENT, 19 NOV 2025)

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