00:00At the start of the Iran war in February, big banks were grappling with the prospect of a
00:05protracted slowdown in the Middle East. But now Wall Street firms are adding bankers in the
00:11region with some relocating staff and others hiring for Dubai-based jobs. For more on this
00:17story, we're now joined by Bloomberg's Laura Gardner-Questa. Laura, I believe this before
00:22I even start talking about it. The traffic in the IFC is crazy these days. But what is driving this
00:28push? So what we've seen actually, perhaps counterintuitively, is that we've seen a rise
00:33particularly in M&A concerning Gulf entities. So we've seen outbound M&A has continued at pace like from the
00:39start of the war.
00:40That hasn't changed. But what we're also seeing is a lot of M&A inside the region. So we're seeing
00:45some
00:46infrastructure deals like huge privatization programs from Aramco. In Kuwait, we're seeing a huge pipeline deal as well,
00:52which is drawing interest from one of the biggest, some of the biggest private equity names. So this sort of
00:59deal
00:59making isn't stopping. And we're also seeing like outside of the infrastructure space, we're seeing like
01:03there's an IVF business, for instance, being sold in the UAE. So M&A has really continued at pace and
01:09banks are
01:09obviously taking notice. And we see even law firms adding staff here. So yeah.
01:13Keeping you busy. Yes, definitely. We are all very busy in this desk. Yeah.
01:18But is it just big corporations that we're seeing coming in? Or is it other types of corporates?
01:24So for now, what we've reported on is mainly these private sector and sort of banks and law firms. I
01:29mean,
01:30we know sovereign wealth funds historically have been like beefing up their stuff. But I would say,
01:34just as a bit of like caveat, we've seen M&A continue at pace. Where we have seen a bit
01:40of a drop is an ECM.
01:42So we've essentially seen IPOs, IPO volumes have fallen this year, particularly in the UAE and Saudi.
01:48We had a huge pull deal. But in Oman, for instance, we had a big IPO pricing just yesterday for
01:55a
01:55first Eliza business. So it's not as muted a picture as you might have expected.
01:59And then going forward into the next half of the second half of the year, and then the next year
02:04as
02:05well, is there from what you're hearing, is there an expectation for this kind of trajectory,
02:09this kind of momentum to go on?
02:10It seems so. I mean, it's again, it's hard to predict. I think you're speaking to a lot of
02:15people like what we really need is a resolution to the conflict that gives people confidence.
02:19And for investment decisions, you really need to be able to say categorically like this has ended.
02:25But for now, I mean, we've seen people have been able to continue with transactions without this
02:32stopping them. I think some sectors, of course, I should also mention real estate,
02:36hospitality is a bit of a tougher backdrop. But for now, we haven't really seen this slowdown.
02:41So we're seeing this slowdown.
02:41So that's
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