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Kuwait’s largest telecoms operator has gained a majority stake in the Palestine Telecommunication Company (Paltel) as part of an expansion plan. Showing the depressed mood in the Gulf, even large family businesses are looking away from their traditional home markets. International law firm Trowers & Hamlins has advised the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on the development and financing of a large scale specialist healthcare project in Muharraq.

Having seen voters punish the protagonists of confrontation, new MPs – women in the vanguard – could hold the key to co-operation in government. Prominent new MP Rola Dashti told GSN that Kuwaitis were seeking solutions rather than apportioning blame. Reappointed PM Sheikh Nasser Mohammed will hope she’s right.

In the project finance market, signals have been mixed. On the one hand, the Saudi market has been through a dour time, not least in its cancellation of the $5.5bn-$6bn Ras Al-Zour independent water and power project (IWPP) as a private sector development after the original bid winner, Malaysia’s Malakoff, failed to come up with financing and decided to withdraw.

While the Middle East has weathered the global recession better than most regions, the regional dynamics have altered, with the more highly leveraged economies such as Dubai losing ground to more conservative and resource-rich players, led by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, after all, is to house the planned Gulf Co-operation Council central bank. Following the 11th GCC consultative summit, held in the Kingdom on 5 May, the GCC’s outgoing secretary-general Abdelrahman Al-Attiyah announced that Riyadh would be the new joint monetary council’s base; this institution will eventually evolve into the GCC central bank.

With the government still in limbo, and the financial crisis putting pressure on everyone, it comes as no surprise that major international oil companies are withdrawing staff and nearing ‘the end of their tether’ with Kuwait’s energy project delays, which in recent months has seen the cancellation

Kuwaitis will go to the polls to elect a new parliament on 16 May, just under a year after the last elections and the third such vote since May 2006.

ADIC eyes MENA private equity deals; Bahrain banks consolidate their positions; Kuwait enters Palestine telecoms sector; Vodafone Qatar to sell a 40% stake in April IPO

Ambitious Gulf minnow Kuwait Energy Company (KEC), present in seven Yemeni blocks, has spoken about its plans to weather the global credit crunch. At an American Business Council meeting recently, KEC’s chief executive Sara Akbar said that the company was prepared for the road ahead and was armed with capital discipline and a positive attitude.

Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah is playing a canny game ahead of May’s general election. It is only ten months since Kuwait went to the polls – and two years since the previous election – a political cycle that illustrates the pattern of confrontation between parliamentarians and ministers which has repeatedly blocked legislation and approval of major projects.

Whoever wins the Iranian election will have to engage in sustained diplomatic fence-mending. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparently thoughtless way with words has cost Iran dear over the past three and a half years. This month, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has been in Riyadh – where he met King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz – and Manama, seeking to patch up the latest strains in relationships with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He also visited Kuwait, with whom Tehran’s dealings are rather more placid.

Sheikh Nasser Mohammed is suffering a political realignment, with the Islamic Constitutional Movement’s move from cabinet to grilling sponsor reflecting an erosion of support for his government.

The confrontations in the Kuwaiti political system reflect a fundamental flaw in its structure: the National Assembly is freely elected, but the parliament’s changing composition, after each election, is not mirrored by a shift in the balance of forces within the cabinet.

Global Investment House has “a pipeline of assets to sell in private deals” over the next few months as it seeks out much-needed cash to repay $3.1bn of liabilities, the Kuwait-based bank’s account executive Altamash Javed told GSN during the Hedge Funds World conference in Dubai on 10 March.

The Islamic Constitutional Movement is the voice of mainstream organised moderate Sunni Islamism in Kuwait. Although it has attempted to push government policy in a more conservative direction on social issues - such as the separation of university classes for men and women - the group has steered a centrist and measured course on economic matters, combining traditional Islamist welfare concerns with a broad acceptance of the case for phased economic liberalisation