Ms. Al Haddad is a former journalist and an Olympic weightlifter. She is the first hijabi athlete to compete in Crossfit and Olympic weightlifting in the Middle East.After being introduced to Crossfit in 2011, she made history as the first…
An international TV and radio presenter, international speaker and moderator with over 10 years of experience, Anna Roberts has interviewed CEOs, government leaders and award winning athletes. In 2015, she launched Nudge, a communications advisory focusing on public speaking and…
Ms. Macura is the CEO of Straight Street Media, author of the book “Faces of the Middle East” and the first Australian female English speaking TV news anchor in the Middle East. Prior to establishing Straight Street Media in…
Ahead of the 9th Cyber Defence Summit we conducted an in-depth interview with Fortinet’s Territory Manager for Qatar, Abdullah Fares. 1. In your opinion, what are the top 3-5 cyber security challenges or gaps that are prevalent in the MEA region?…
Introduction In the fields of intelligence and military investigation, the use of the O.S.INT discipline for open source analysis has grown steadily over the years. Inside this framework, cyber intelligence has seen the development of a new area, the SOC.M.INT.…
The Saudi Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs is responsible for the administration of all of the Kingdom’s municipalities – ranging from massive urban centres to smaller, more rural areas. A key focus of the Ministry is to ensure that…
The UAE’s financial sector is set for major changes ahead of what Bloomberg has called the biggest M&A deal in the Middle East. The National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) and First Gulf Bank (FGB) have agreed to merge, creating…
The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) recently invested 2.45 billion USD into acquiring an office building in Singapore. QIA bought the 43-storey building, Asian Square Tower 1, from US based private equity firm BlackRock. It is the largest single-tower real estate…
Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows peaked in 2015 to 1.76 trillion USD – the highest investment levels seen since the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The UN expects this figure to decline by between 10 and 15 percent this year. When…
Ever since the historic Brexit vote, property firm Select Property has reportedly seen a 200 percent increase in enquiries about UK real estate from investors based in the GCC (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman).…
In H1 2016, foreign investors spent a total of 5.1 billion USD on apartment properties in the US. Investment into US apartments by foreign buyers has averaged 5.4 billion USD over the past ten years, and so the activity seen…
Venture capitalists based in the US are increasingly passing up the chance to invest in young startups, and choosing to invest into mature companies, preferably with proven business models. According to a report by research firm PitchBook Data, Q1 2016…
African tech startups received a total of over 185 million USD over the course of 2015. A significant proportion of this investment was dedicated to “social enterprises”, i.e. profit-making companies with social impact as their main goal. Some African entrepreneurs…
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which has been the primary investment vehicle of the UAE government for the past 40 years, has seen a drop in its long-term gains. The fund’s assets are expected to drop to 475 billion USD…
The investment arm of the Kingdom of Bahrain, Mumtalakat Holding Company, has announced the recent successful acquisition of an equity stake in KOS Group, a European healthcare group that provides long-term care and rehabilitation services, as well as hospital equipment…