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Saudi officials, including General Authority of Civil Aviation president Faisal Al-Sugair and Najran governor Prince Mishaal Bin Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz, have visited the new SR400m ($106.6m) Najran regional airport where Saudi Arabian Airlines will shift its operations on 18 September.

The prominent Qatari businessman Khalid Al-Rabban died from a heart attack on 22 March at his villa in Al-Khor. His funeral was held at the state mosque the following day, and senior dignitaries including the Father Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani attended the family’s majlis to pay condolences. Born in 1942, Al-Rabban was educated in Beirut and took over his family’s Rabban Contracting & Trading in 1970. The Rabban Group includes interests in contracting, cement, general sponsorship and trading and is one of the largest suppliers of mineral water in Qatar through Rayyan Water.

Tehran again failed to persuade the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) to take it off its list of “high risk” jurisdictions, at the organisation’s plenary session in Paris on 21-23 February. However, the organisation – an inter-governmental body which monitors anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing efforts – decided to continue suspending countermeasures against Iran while the Islamic Republic works on reforms to its financial sector.

The extent of local banks' exposure to Dubai World remains unclear - and evaluating lenders' exposure is difficult since secondary market trades can reduce or increase an original lender's exposure, while new lenders can enter the market.

Secretary of state for international trade Liam Fox has been on a brief tour of Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) capitals, as part of efforts to line up new trade deals for the UK’s post-European Union future. The UK is not able to sign any trade deals until it leaves the EU, which is unlikely to happen before 2019 at the earliest, but it is keen to set out the parameters of possible new deals ahead of that date.

A court sentenced the chief executive of state-owned Oman Oil Company (OOC), Ahmed Al-Wahaibi, to 23 years in jail on 27 February for accepting bribes, abuse of office and money laundering. It was the most severe punishment meted out in a series of corruption trials that began in 2013. The Court of First Instance in Muscat also convicted Adel Al-Raisi, a former ministerial aide in the economy ministry, of organising a bribe made by a senior official at South Korea-based LGI to Al-Wahaibi, and sentenced him to 10 years in jail, according to the Reuters news agency.

The ever hungry QIA plans to take advantage of the global property slump in its bid to diversify its asset base.

Workers remittances from Saudi Arabia fell to their lowest level in at least four years in September, according to data released on 29 October by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (Sama – central bank). Transfers by non-Saudis amounted to SR8.55bn ($2.3bn) in September, down 21% on the same month last year and down SR4bn, or 32%, on the figure for August 2017.

Qatar has applied for a licence to invest $5bn in China. On a visit to Beijing, Qatar’s minister of energy and industry Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada said Qatar planned to invest part of the revenues from transferring gas to China into Chinese shares. Qatar exports around 5m tonnes of liquified natural gas (LNG) to China each year.

Banks in several of the Gulf’s main financial centres – including Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar – have been developing working relationships with the UK authorities, who, given London’s prominence as an international financial centre, have potentially valuable experience in tackling funding flows going to Islamic State (IS) and other radical groups involved in fighting in Syria and Iraq. It is not yet clear how deep this co-operation runs. One person involved in the process described the relationship as “a work in progress”.

While the secession of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) area has occupied most attention, a failure of state-building in post-Baathist Iraq might also see other regions looking for at least Kurdish levels of autonomy, if not outright independence. Of most concern to Baghdad would be the hydrocarbons-rich south. GSN spoke to a range of decision-makers in Basra to test the support for different kinds of decentralisation in the province, which has been called ‘the failed Gulf state’ by historians of the area

With the Dubai property market going through one of its periodic downturns, the authorities are keen to contain pessimism, lest it upsets investor sentiment. Some local market players have put a positive spin on the past year’s 10% price slump, by suggesting there should be a recovery in H2 2016. Not everyone is convinced, however, with the market confronted with a twofold problem: the strong US dollar, which has made property more expensive for international buyers, and low oil prices, which mean regional investors have less money. That has opened up a gap between supply and demand.

Abu Dhabi is making a renewed effort to attract more private sector finance into its economy, setting up the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and putting new laws in place to regulate public private partnerships (PPPs). The new investment office will be responsible for increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) into the emirate, particularly in a number of priority sectors such as technology, tourism, and advanced manufacturing. As part of that it will set up a PPP Centre of Excellence to develop “attractive investment models for international and local investors”.

Shares in Julphar Pharmaceuticals have been suspended on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX), following a saga in which the disastrous handling of product suspensions in Saudi Arabia last year jeopardised the company’s wider marketing and operations. Although publicly quoted, members of Ras Al-Khaimah’s royal family have retained a large stake in the company, which was founded in 1980 by RAK’s late ruler Sheikh Saqr Bin Mohammed Al-Qasimi. The share suspension led to the resignation on 17 April of company chairman Sheikh Faisal Bin Saqr Bin Mohammed Al-Qasimi and his son, Julphar vice chairman Sheikh Abdullah Bin Faisal Al-Qasimi.

The Abu Dhabi government-owned International Petroleum Investment Company (Ipic) has offered to acquire from France’s Total the entire share capital it does not already own in Spain’s Compañía Española de Petróleos (Cepsa).