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Faisal Bin Sultan Al-Qassimi has handed the chairmanship of the bank he set up in 1975 to his son Mohammed Bin Faisal

The Alpha Dhabi investment vehicle owned by UAE national security advisor Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Zayed has transferred three of its hotel subsidiaries to NCTH in return for shares which will give it a majority stake in the enlarged hospitality group

Two of Dubai’s larger real estate developers, Nakheel and Meydan, are being handed over to Dubai Holding, the investment group owned by the emirate’s Ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum

Two former managers of PetroSaudi International, a company set up by Prince Turki Bin Abdullah, are facing bribery, money laundering and other charges over a 2009 deal with Malaysia’s 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), which has been at the centre of a major corruption scandal for the past decade

In a further accumulation of jobs in the ruling family, President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed has named his daughter Mariam as deputy chair of the Presidential Court for National Projects while his son Theyab has a new senior role at the Presidential Court for Development and Fallen Heroes’ Affairs

The UAE has set its sights on carving out a leading international role in artificial intelligence, with national security advisor Sheikh Tahnoun Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Khaled Bin Mohammed vying for national AI leadership – but the pursuit of the powerful technology is also causing friction with the US

Noor Bint Ali Al-Khulaif was appointed to head the EDB in mid-February, taking over from Khalid Humaidan who is now governor of Central Bank of Bahrain.

Kuwait Finance House was the target of a complex fraud attempt in which a fictitious arbitration award was presented to the High Court in London and used to secure court orders to seize almost $90m in assets.

A relatively rare phone call between Bahrain’s King Hamad and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim on 3 March followed signs of progress being made on the long-delayed Friendship Bridge project to create a physical link between the sometimes feuding neighbours.

As predicted for some months, the UAE has been removed from the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring maintained by the Financial Action Task Force, even though some claim little has really changed.

King Salman Bin Abdelaziz’s nine years on the throne have seen a concentration of power in the 88-year-old monarch’s immediate family – who are the subject of the latest GSN profile series – that is unprecedented in modern Saudi history. Other significant branches of the Al-Saud have gone into retreat as Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has taken an iron grip on the kingdom

In a $66.5m deal with Houston-headquartered Vaalco Energy, Saudi-Ethiopian businessman Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi is selling Svenska Petroleum Exploration, his Sweden-based oil company that has been up for sale since bankruptcy proceedings were launched against Al-Amoudi’s Petroswede in early 2023

Luxembourg-based real estate fund Meigerhorn II Etoy has filed a winding-up petition in the Cayman Islands against GEMS Global Schools, part of Dubai’s GEMS Education, over unpaid rent at a now-closed Swiss school.

The Abu Dhabi government’s ADQ wealth fund and Tahnoun Bin Zayed’s International Holding Company have sold key real estate assets to Q Holding, in return for shares in the listed real estate group, in a complex deal that further signals the increasing co-operation between Abu Dhabi’s many state and privately-owned funds.

They may not be popular, but clerics dominate contemporary Iran, its politics and economy to an extent that most Iranians might have thought inconceivable in the years immediately after the 1979 revolution. The latest series of GSN profiles focuses on senior clerics who occupy key positions across Iran’s political system – all of them closely tied to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and committed to the Islamic republic’s long-term survival.