Middle East: Finance and Banking

The transaction, which was also recognised as Ijarah Deal of the Year, reflects the continued use of sophisticated Sukuk structures in the region and the important role of Cayman Islands issuer vehicles...

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - June 30th, 2025 - Leading global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) has released its latest edition of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) Banking Pulse for Q1 2025.

The private credit landscape across the Middle East is maturing at pace, with sponsors, institutional investors, and arrangers increasingly demanding...

Israel's Knesset has introduced a groundbreaking private investment fund in trust regime that enables supervised mutual funds to invest in alternative assets for the first time. How will this regulatory shift affect fund managers currently operating under private structures, and what decisions must they make before the February 2027 implementation deadline?

The United Arab Emirates has become one of the leading jurisdictions for investment funds structuring across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Much of this growth has been driven by the development of two internationally recognised financial centres, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), both of which provide dedicated regulatory frameworks for licensed fund managers, asset managers and investment platforms.

Johannes Jonas, managing partner of Cohen & Gresser's Dubai office, explains why familiarity can create a false sense of confidence—and why long-term success in the Gulf depends on understanding the region's business culture as much as its legal framework.

How to find joint property dispute lawyer in Dubai: assess title, co-owner rights, mortgages, evidence, strategy, fees, and relevant dispute experience.

You bought a property with bank finance and paid it off for several years. Then your income changed, instalments were missed and the bank issued a demand for overdue payments or warned that enforcement against the property could ensue.

The Central Bank of Kuwait has issued a directive prohibiting financial institutions from accepting mortgages over buildings constructed on state-owned land as qualifying collateral. This regulatory intervention closes a market practice gap and carries significant implications for project finance structures, particularly affecting lenders who had previously accepted such security arrangements outside the PPP framework.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has introduced a comprehensive new framework governing foreign ownership of real estate through Royal Decree No. M/14, marking a significant shift in the regulatory landscape for international investors. This framework establishes detailed conditions, geographical zones, and registration requirements for non-Saudi individuals and entities seeking to acquire property rights in the Kingdom. The new regulations form part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative to enhance foreign in

US regulators are establishing clearer frameworks for tokenization, moving beyond treating it as speculative crypto toward practical financial infrastructure redesign. Israeli clients need to understand how these regulatory developments will impact digital asset systems, focusing on buyer protections, compliance requirements, and operational reliability rather than simply adding token labels to existing assets.

On 31 March 2026, the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (“VARA”) published Part V of the Exchange Services Rulebook, formally codifying the regulatory framework for Exchange Traded Derivative (“ETD”) Services.