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Qatar Airways (QA) has acquired a 9.99% stake in International Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways (BA) and Spanish flag carrier Iberia, QA said on 30 January. The deal, worth about $1.7bn, represents a push westward for the Qatari airline, which is now the largest shareholder of IAG. In a statement, QA said that it “may consider increasing its stake further over time”, although it had no plans to do so at the moment. Non-European Union (EU) shareholders are only allowed to own up to 49% of EU airlines.

With most titles settled and Financial Fair Play fines agreed, the European season is all but over. Now the Fifa World Cup beckons. Drawn from the second tier of English football will be Iran’s Reza Ghoochannejhad (known as Gucci to fans and teammates), one of the expatriate Iranians Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz has brought into the Islamic Republic’s team to play in Brazil. A sign of Iran’s opening up, the tricky Charlton Athletic striker has been called up to play in Brazil having previously played for Dutch national youth teams; his parents had settled in the Netherlands when Mashhad-born Gucci was eight years old.

Governments continue to put pressure on the United States to relax, or at least further clarify, its attitude to major European banks doing business with Iran. The issue has become the most significant obstacle in the way of international companies taking advantage of the relaxation of sanctions in January. Despite further talks in recent days there is still no breakthrough, to the frustration of Iranian and European officials and companies. The key problem stems from delayed prosecution agreements that major international banks struck with the US Treasury and its Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) enforcement arm, after past breaches of sanctions.

The worst of the economic downturn is over, Dubai’s ruler said as he joined a chorus of Emirati voices emphasising federal unity – which may be significant after months of speculation over relations between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. In an apparently impromptu interlude in a prepared address at Merrill Lynch’s Mena equities conference, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum (MBR), who is also UAE vice president and prime minister, said ties between Abu Dhabi and Dubai should not be questioned.

The Iranian embassy in London – which reopened in August 2015 after a gap of four years – has been unable to open a local bank account, in the latest evidence of UK banks’ continued unwillingness to deal with Iran, despite the lifting of most sanctions on the country in January 2016. Iranian ambassador Hamid Baeidinejad has been voicing his frustration about the situation. Baeidinejad told a conference in London on 2 November that the lack of a bank account was “really very strange… not explainable at all”. It was often the first topic his colleagues in Tehran raised when he spoke to them, added the ambassador, who took up his post in September.

United Arab Emirates investors are again trying to get projects off the ground in Algeria, with Federal National Council president Abdelaziz Abdullah Al-Ghurair meeting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algiers earlier this month to push their case.

Politics: Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al-Said is the 14th ruler of the Al-Busaidi dynasty (founded in 1750) and the monumental figure in modern Oman. Having deposed his father in 1970, Qaboos relies on allies typically drawn from the merchant elite, rather than his relatively small family. In a highly centralised power structure, Qaboos remains premier, defence, finance and foreign minister, Central Bank of Oman chair and armed forces commander-in-chief. He was briefly married but has no children or heir apparent.

Kuwait Airways staff staged a sit-in outside the company’s headquarters in Dajeej on 9 January, in protest at alleged plans to cut staff numbers and benefits. Among those present was MP Mohammed Al-Khodair and former employee Ahmed Al-Randi, who told the Kuwait Times that some retired members of staff had been deprived of rights such as annual free tickets.

The tough market for Gulf airlines has claimed its first high-profile casualty, with the resignation of James Hogan as president and chief executive officer of Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways announced on 24 January. Hogan, who has been at the helm of the airline since 2006, is due to step down in H2 2017. He will join an unnamed investment company along with chief financial officer James Rigney, who is also leaving Etihad later this year. The search for a new chief executive and CFO is under way.

Kuwait’s financial sector is reeling from a dispute between the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and the Kuwait Banking Association (KBA). KBA announced on 10 June that banks had been told not to pay any cash dividends to shareholders this year, to preserve liquidity. The announcement was made during trading hours on the Boursa Kuwait and caused a sharp fall. The next day the CMA announced it had cancelled the previous day’s trading, an unprecedented move which wiped out the share price falls but had serious ramifications.

There have long been rumours that Qatar was circling Claridge’s, one of London’s grandest hotels and the subject of a legal battle for years. A favourite with royalty since the mid-19th century, the iconic Mayfair property passed into Qatari hands in late April, along with two other luxury hotels, the Berkeley and the Connaught. The buyer was Constellation Hotels Group (CHG), which seems to be a privately owned group. It has bought a 64% stake in Coroin, a luxury hotel group that holds the three hotels, from David and Frederick Barclay, owners of The Telegraph newspaper, who had been in an acrimonious struggle over control of the hotels with another shareholder, Irish property magnate Patrick McKillen.

It emerged in September that Qatari art dealer Sheikh Saud Bin Mohammed must pay London-based SJ Berwin £261,279 in unpaid fees for advice given when his assets were frozen following a 2012 court case. Sheikh Saud was sued in the UK High Court in November 2012 by a group of dealers who said he had dishonoured a pledge to pay $19.7m for a coin collection sold at a New York auction in January 2012 (GSN 936/8, 935/10). Sheikh Saud was likened by the dealers’ QC, Jeffrey Gruder of Essex Court Chambers, to an “inveterate gambler” who could not stop himself spending millions on objects of his desire before walking away from his obligations.

Rules governing alcohol consumption have long varied from Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) member state to state, as governments try to balance local sensitivities with the demands of the tourism industry and a desire to appear open to the world. While Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE emirate of Sharjah all have bans in place – although there are strong rumours the Saudi authorities are considering loosening the rules in the modernistic Neom city – other GCC states all allow the controlled sale and consumption of alcohol, albeit with varying degrees of tolerance.

The King’s son, deputy foreign minister Prince Abdelaziz, has won a civil law suit against the City of Los Angeles related to his plans to build three large family homes in Benedict Canyon, near Beverly Hills.

The final stage of the entry of the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) to the MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index was completed on 29 August, three months after the first phase was implemented. The bourse has a 2.8% weighting in the index, in which 31 Tadawul-listed companies are included. The much-anticipated promotion from being a standalone market has already attracted large sums of foreign capital, with the Tadawul saying foreign investors accounted for 21% of all market trading in the first seven months of the year, equivalent to $56bn-worth of trading.