Investing in the GCC in 2026: Resilience After the Iran War

A founder sold his software company two years ago, moved the family to Lisbon and started investing in the GCC. There is a holding company in the Dubai International Financial Centre, set up on a lawyer’s advice. There is a trading company in a free zone, run by a former colleague. There is an off-plan apartment on the Dubai coast, an account at a UAE bank that took four months to open, and a commitment to a regional private fund introduced by a friend at a dinner. On 28 February 2026, when the war with Iran began and the Strait of Hormuz closed, he tried to answer three questions. How much of the family sits in the Gulf? In which entities and currencies? Who can sign if he cannot fly there? Nobody could answer any of them in one number. Each decision had been sound. Nobody had put them together.

The founder is a composite, but every part of his set-up is common. This piece sets out, from IMF, World Bank, EIA, UNCTAD and national data, how the 2026 war hit each of the six Gulf Cooperation Council economies and why most held. Then it explains where families actually lose value. Our view is plain: the opportunity is real, and the economies proved sturdier than the headlines of March suggested. The risk that costs families money is rarely the region. It is the operating layer around the exposure: entities, banks, local counterparties, reporting, succession and size.

Investing in the GCC in 2026: what the war exposed

The war did not create the founder’s problem. It revealed it. Before February, the fragmentation cost him a few hours a quarter. After February, it became a decision problem: whether to meet the fund’s next capital call, whether the trading company’s bank lines were safe, whether the developer would deliver. Each answer sat with a different person, in a different format and currency.

This is the pattern we see in families with €2–20M who arrived in the Gulf by accumulation rather than by design. Each piece was sensible when it was made. The weakness is not in any one decision. It is that nobody owns the sum of them.

Three things make the sum harder to see in the Gulf than at home. The entities sit under different regimes: a DIFC or ADGM entity is governed by a common-law financial free zone, a free-zone company by its own authority, and a mainland company by federal and emirate rules. The currencies are pegged to the US dollar, not to the euro, so a euro-based family carries a dollar exposure it may not have chosen. And the professionals involved, from the corporate service provider to the bank’s relationship manager, each see their own piece and are paid for their own piece.

None of this is a reason to avoid the region. It is a reason to hold an exposure there the way a family office would: mapped, measured, sized and reviewed.

How the Iran war hit Gulf economies in 2026

In its April 2026 Regional Economic Outlook Update, the IMF cut its forecast for GCC growth in 2026 to 2.0%, from 4.4% in 2025. It projects Qatar to contract by 8.6%, Kuwait by 0.6% and Bahrain by 0.5%, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE still grow by 3.1% and Oman by 3.5%.

The war that began on 28 February 2026 hit the Gulf through three channels at once. The first was the Strait of Hormuz. According to the IMF, the strait normally carries roughly one-fifth of global oil supply, about 20–21 million barrels a day, and about one-quarter of global liquefied natural gas trade. After hostilities began, tanker crossings fell from roughly 70 a day to near zero. The second was physical damage to energy infrastructure. The third was air travel and services: in early April, the IMF recorded departures down by roughly one-third in Abu Dhabi, about two-thirds in Dubai and about three-quarters in Doha, with complete suspensions in Kuwait City and Manama.

Oil prices followed. The EIA reports that Brent averaged $103 a barrel in March, $32 above February, and that the daily price reached almost $128 on 2 April. The IMF’s April update, published after a ceasefire announced on 7 April, cut its forecasts for every GCC economy. The table below shows its figures for 2026 against the October 2025 forecast. The press often misreports them: Qatar’s figure of minus 14.7 is the revision, not the growth rate.

The IMF’s explanation is direct: the economies with the largest downgrades are those with “heavy reliance on the Strait of Hormuz for the transit of traded goods” and a higher incidence of infrastructure damage. It also notes that food import shares are above 80% for Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, which leaves them exposed to higher transport costs if the disruption lasts.

The GCC economic outlook for 2026, as of October

The IMF’s April numbers rested on a reference scenario in which trade and production disruptions faded by the middle of 2026. That did not happen, so the April table should be read as a floor on the damage, not a final count. The World Bank was more cautious from the start. On 8 April it projected GCC growth of 1.3% in 2026, down 3.1 percentage points since January. On 11 June, in its Global Economic Prospects, it said growth in the directly affected Gulf economies would fall from 3.9% in 2025 to “close to zero in 2026”, before rebounding to about 5% in 2027–28, on an assumed Brent average of $94 a barrel for 2026.

The national data since then shows the split. In Saudi Arabia, the GASTAT flash estimate for the second quarter of 2026 recorded real GDP down 4.8% year on year, with oil activities down 24.7% and non-oil activities still up 0.6%. In the UAE, the central bank’s September Quarterly Economic Review reported real GDP up 3.0% in the first quarter, with non-oil output up 4.8%, and projected growth of 1.6% for 2026 and 10.4% for 2027. It also reported oil production back near record highs of 3.8 million barrels a day in June and July.

Energy markets remain the swing factor. In its 9 September Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA said flows through Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb “remain constrained and variable”. Middle East crude production shut-ins averaged 6.7 million barrels a day in August, up from 5.0 million in July. The EIA assumes constraints persist through the fourth quarter, with shut-ins averaging 5.7 million barrels a day, Brent around $90 in the second half of 2026 and $77 by the second quarter of 2027.

As of 5 October 2026, there is no ceasefire in force. The April ceasefire and the memorandum signed in June broke down on 8 July, when the United States and Iran exchanged attacks; indirect talks mediated by Qatar continued at the UN General Assembly in late September, and the sequencing of any reopening of the strait was still disputed. We make no forecast here. A family holding Gulf assets should treat the status of the strait as a review trigger, a point we return to below.

Why most GCC economies held: buffers, bypass routes and the non-oil economy

The damage is real, and in Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain it is severe. Yet the region did not break, for four mechanical reasons: sovereign wealth funds across the Middle East and North Africa holding about US$6.1 trillion in September 2026, pipelines that let Saudi and Emirati crude bypass the Strait of Hormuz, central bank support, and a non-oil economy that produced about 79% of UAE output in 2025. Each matters to a family deciding how to hold an exposure.

Sovereign buffers. The Gulf states entered the war with very large reserves of capital. Global SWF estimates that MENA sovereign wealth funds held US$6.1 trillion by September 2026 and projects US$8.8 trillion by 2030. These funds did not stop investing: MENA sovereign investors deployed US$102 billion in the first nine months of 2026, 39% of global dealmaking by Global SWF’s count, with Mubadala alone at US$26.2 billion. Global SWF adds a caution worth keeping: “The Iran War may bring withdrawals and domestic focus, depending on the SWF.” The IMF’s April update says the same in policy terms: “most GCC countries have large buffers that could be deployed to help mitigate medium-term risks.”

Bypass routes. Two pipelines let crude avoid the strait. The EIA describes Saudi Aramco’s East-West pipeline, from Abqaiq to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, as a 5 million barrel-a-day line, and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to Fujairah, on the Gulf of Oman, as a 1.8 million barrel-a-day line. Before the war, the EIA estimated that about 2.6 million barrels a day of that capacity could be available to bypass Hormuz in a disruption. That is a fraction of the 20 million barrels a day that normally transit the strait, but it explains much of the gap between the Saudi and Emirati revisions and those of Qatar and Kuwait.

Policy support. On 17 March 2026, the board of the Central Bank of the UAE approved a Financial Institution Resilience Package, which it said was backed by assets of AED 1 trillion. The package widened banks’ access to liquidity in dirhams and dollars, temporarily relaxed liquidity and capital buffers, and allowed banks to defer the classification of loans to affected customers. The central bank’s September review lists the package among the reasons it expects growth to stay positive this year.

A non-oil economy. Diversification is no longer a slogan in the two largest economies. In Saudi Arabia, GASTAT reported real GDP growth of 4.5% in 2025, with non-oil activities up 4.9%; crude oil and natural gas were still the single largest activity, at 17.1% of GDP at current prices, followed by government at 14.0%. In the UAE, FCSC data showed real GDP up 6.2% in 2025 to AED 1.9 trillion and non-oil GDP up 6.8% to AED 1.5 trillion, about 79% of the total, with construction up 11.1% and finance and insurance up 10.4%. That non-oil base is why Saudi non-oil activity kept growing in a quarter when oil output fell by a quarter.

Capital kept arriving before the war, too. UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2026, published on 7 July, ranked the UAE ninth in the world for foreign direct investment in 2025, with inflows of US$48.24 billion, up 6%, and second globally by number of greenfield projects for a third year. Saudi Arabia ranked 13th. UNCTAD also warned that the conflict “is likely to depress global FDI in the near term”, with regional projects facing suspension, delay or cancellation. Private wealth was building its own structures in the region: the DIFC reported 1,115 foundations established by DIFC-based families in 2025, up 66%, and 1,289 family-related entities, up 61%. Those figures were published on 5 February 2026 and predate the war.

Oil supply policy changed shape during the war as well. The UAE left OPEC with effect from 1 May 2026, according to the EIA. The seven countries now coordinating voluntary output within OPEC+ (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman) raised output for September by 188,000 barrels a day, their sixth consecutive monthly increase, then decided on 6 September and again on 4 October to hold production at September levels for October and November. For a family, the point is that Gulf state revenues now rest on a different mix of volume, price and politics than a year ago.

The honest summary is uneven resilience. The IMF expects output in the median directly affected economy to remain about 2% below its pre-war trend in 2030. Oman and Saudi Arabia were hit least in the April table, the UAE took a services shock but kept a non-oil engine running, and Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain took the largest losses. “The Gulf” is six economies, not one, and a family’s exposure should be described country by country.

Fiscal breakeven: why the oil price still matters to a non-oil investment

Even a family that holds no energy assets is exposed to the oil price through the state. Each Gulf government has a fiscal breakeven oil price, the price at which its budget balances. When oil sits below that level for long, governments spend reserves, borrow, or cut spending, and public spending drives much of the non-oil economy: construction, contracting, real estate demand and bank liquidity. We quote no breakeven figures, because we found no 2026 primary source we could verify. The concept is enough: a family with a Gulf company or property should know which state budget its revenue ultimately depends on.

Where families are already active in the Gulf

We describe here what families do, not what they should do. Whether and how much to allocate to the region is a decision for the family and its regulated managers. In our experience, a European, Brazilian or Iberian family with €2–20M typically meets the Gulf in five ways, often several at once.

Residence and an operating base. Some families move a founder or a branch of the family to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, often on a long-term residence visa. Residence and tax residence are separate questions, and the second is where families get hurt. Tax residence is the status that gives a country the right to tax a person as a resident, decided by that country’s own test. Our case file on a founder with four banks and eleven entities shows a half-finished move, and the tax residence entry sets out the basic test.

Operating companies, free zone or mainland. A free-zone company is incorporated with one of the UAE’s free-zone authorities and is generally set up to trade within the zone or internationally. A mainland company is licensed by an emirate’s economic department and can trade across the UAE market. The choice affects licensing, banking, tax and succession, and belongs to local counsel and the family’s tax advisor.

Holding structures and foundations. The financial free zones, DIFC in Dubai and ADGM in Abu Dhabi, have their own common-law courts and registries. Families use them for holding companies and, increasingly, for foundations.

Co-investment beside regional capital. Families invest in regional private funds or deals alongside sovereign and family capital. The documents, reporting and exit terms are local, and the family’s European advisors have often never read them.

Real estate. Residential property, often bought off-plan, is the most common first exposure. It is also the one most often held outside any structure, in a personal name, with no plan for what happens on death.

Family foundations in the UAE: DIFC and ADGM foundations

A foundation is an entity with its own legal personality, separate from the founder, that holds assets for beneficiaries or for a purpose set out in its charter. A council runs it, and a guardian may supervise the council. Like a company, it can outlive its founder. In the UAE, the two main regimes are the DIFC Foundations Law, DIFC Law No. 3 of 2018, and the ADGM Foundations Regulations 2017. The DIFC’s figure of 1,115 family foundations in 2025 shows how quickly families adopted them. How a foundation answers Sharia succession, and when a Gulf family office needs a licence, is set out in our GCC family office guide.

We offer no legal analysis of either regime; that belongs to licensed counsel. What we see is the operating question that follows. A family foundation in the UAE has a council, a charter, registered agents, records to keep and fees to renew. It sits beside a holding in Portugal or Spain, a will in another country and bank accounts in a third. If nobody maps how these connect, the foundation can end up holding the wrong assets while the succession plan at home assumes something else. Our wealth planning and structuring work starts with that map.

Is it safe to invest in Dubai and the Gulf in 2026?

Most GCC economies have absorbed the 2026 shock without breaking: the UAE central bank still projects positive growth this year, Saudi non-oil activity kept growing and sovereign buffers are large. But the war is not over, and Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain were hit hard. For a family, safety depends on how the exposure is held and sized.

The question “is it safe” hides two others. The first is about the place: will the economy, the legal system and the banks keep working? For the UAE and Saudi Arabia, they have so far, under severe stress, backed by very large public balance sheets. The second is about the family: if something goes wrong, will it know what it holds, can it act, and is the loss bearable? Only the second is in the family’s control.

There are honest counterpoints, and a family should hear them. In March, CNBC reported that the war had shaken Dubai’s image as a haven for the wealthy, with residents leaving and family offices and wealth managers reconsidering their regional footprint. Property markets, which rose for years, are the most exposed to a change in sentiment; we cite no forecast for them because we found none from a primary source we could verify. And the IMF’s medium-term finding, that the most affected economies stay about 2% below their pre-war path in 2030, is a reminder that recovery and scarring can happen at the same time.

None of this says whether a given family should hold more or less in the Gulf. That depends on its liabilities, currency, residence, other assets and horizon, and belongs in its investment policy statement, agreed with its regulated managers. In our experience, the families who suffered most in March were not those with the most exposure. They were those who could not see theirs.

Where families lose value: the operating layer around a Gulf exposure

The opportunity in the Gulf is captured or lost below the investment decision. We see seven failure points again and again. Each is ordinary on its own. Together they explain why a sound investment can still cost a family money, time and options.

1. Entities in two or three jurisdictions, with no map. A DIFC holding owns the free-zone company; the apartment sits in a personal name; the fund commitment was signed by a Portuguese holding. Nobody has drawn the chart. The cost shows up when a bank asks for the ultimate beneficial owner, when an accountant needs consolidated figures, or when the founder dies and the heirs cannot find the share registers.

2. Corporate tax and substance conditions nobody tracks. The UAE no longer means zero tax by default, as the next section explains. A free-zone company keeps its preferential treatment only while it meets conditions. When nobody owns that checklist, the family learns about a lapse from the tax authority, not from its advisors.

3. Bank onboarding and KYC renewals that freeze accounts. Opening a UAE bank account for a foreign-owned entity can take months. Keeping it open requires periodic know-your-customer refreshes, often with documents from three countries, translated and certified. A missed request can freeze an account at the moment the family needs it, as many found in March when they tried to move money quickly.

4. Local counterparties nobody checks. The corporate service provider files renewals, the property manager collects rent, the fund manager sends a quarterly letter. Each may be competent. None is checked.

5. No consolidated reporting across AED, EUR and BRL. The dirham is pegged at AED 3.6725 to the US dollar and the Saudi riyal at SAR 3.75. A euro-based family therefore holds a dollar position through every Gulf asset, whether or not it chose one. Statements arrive in different currencies, formats and frequencies, and nobody translates them into one view. Our consolidated reporting and back office work exists for exactly this.

6. Succession under local law, never mapped. Which law governs the succession of an apartment in Dubai, a share in a free-zone company or a seat on a foundation council? Whether a will made in Lisbon or Madrid is enough is a question for licensed counsel in both places. In our experience, it is rarely asked until it is urgent.

7. Concentration nobody measured. Add the holding, the company, the apartment, the fund commitment and the cash at the UAE bank, and the Gulf may be a much larger share of the family than anyone intended. It happened one reasonable decision at a time. Nobody measured it because nobody was asked to.

The cost is seldom one dramatic loss. It is a frozen account in a crisis, a lapsed filing, a capital call met from the wrong pocket, a succession that takes years, and a family that cannot decide quickly because it cannot see.

UAE corporate tax and the free-zone conditions

The UAE introduced a federal corporate tax under Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022, for financial years starting on or after 1 June 2023. Taxable income up to AED 375,000 is taxed at 0% and income above it at 9%. A company in a free zone that meets the conditions to be a Qualifying Free Zone Person can pay 0% on its qualifying income, but, as the Federal Tax Authority’s guide sets out, it then loses the AED 375,000 threshold and pays 9% on taxable income that is not qualifying income. Returns are due within nine months of the end of the tax period.

For a family this creates a recurring task, not a one-off decision. Someone has to confirm each year that the free-zone company still meets the conditions, that the corporate tax return is filed, and that the treatment matches what the family’s home-country advisors assume. The UAE has also applied the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard since 1 January 2017, according to the Ministry of Finance, so account information held in the UAE is part of the international exchange framework. The interaction with the family’s tax residence at home is a matter for its tax advisors in both countries; our job is to make sure they are working from the same facts. The tax treaty questions behind a move are covered in our case file on a property developer who asked to move to Dubai for tax.

You need people on the inside, and one person above them

Holding a Gulf exposure well requires local professionals, licensed in the place where the assets sit. No firm outside the region can replace them, and none should pretend to. The table below sets out who a typical family needs and what each one does.

Every one of these people is necessary. None looks at the whole family, and none is asked to report on the others. Local counsel has not seen the will in Lisbon. The fund manager does not know the family already holds Dubai property through another entity. When something goes wrong, each can show their part was done correctly, and the family still bears the loss.

What is missing is a coordinator who sits above the local professionals and works only for the family. That person writes one brief that every advisor works from, collects their outputs, checks them against the family’s whole picture, and reports to the family in one place, in its language and currency. That role is not regulated advice and does not replace any licensed professional. It is the role PWA plays.

We are clear about what that role is and is not. We hold no licence in the Gulf, we do not act as local counsel, we do not run a bank relationship on the family’s behalf, and we are not paid by any of the counterparties we coordinate. We are paid by the family, and only by the family. That independence is what lets us ask the bank, the corporate service provider and the fund manager the questions none of them would ask about each other.

A piece of the portfolio, not everything: governing a Gulf exposure

The Gulf can be a valuable part of a family’s wealth and a dangerous whole of it. The line between the two is not a view on the region. It is a ceiling the family sets in advance, measures honestly and reviews on a calendar.

The place for that ceiling is the family’s investment policy statement, the document that sets goals, risk and liquidity limits and the rules every bank and manager follows. The family agrees it with its regulated managers. PWA does not set the number. What we do is make sure the ceiling exists, that it covers every way the family is exposed, and that it is measured and reported.

A ceiling is only useful if it is measured across everything. The typical failure is a ceiling the regional manager respects inside its mandate while the family holds property, a company and cash outside it.

Reporting should be quarterly at minimum, with the Gulf position shown separately in the consolidated report: value, currency, counterparty and liquidity, against the ceiling. Then come the review triggers, the events that force a look before the next scheduled review. For a Gulf exposure, we would expect the family to name triggers such as these:

• a change in the status of the Strait of Hormuz or a renewed escalation;
• a bank’s KYC request or a change in a relationship manager;
• a capital call on a regional fund;
• a change in residence or tax residence of any family member;
• a change in the UAE or home-country tax rules that affect a structure;
• a breach of any ceiling, in either direction, caused by market moves or new commitments.

Our investment oversight work runs this discipline for families: we do not choose the investments, but we check that the managers who do are working inside the family’s own rules, and that the family can see the result.

What PWA does around a GCC exposure, and where it stops

PWA — Private Wealth Advisory designs and runs the operating layer around private wealth. Around a Gulf exposure, that operating layer has seven parts. We build them with the family’s existing advisors, local and European, rather than replacing any of them.

The work runs in sequence. We collect what exists: statements, constitutional documents, licences, contracts and every professional involved. We draw the entity map and counterparty roster and bring the Gulf position into the consolidated report. We write one brief, so counsel in Dubai and the tax advisor in Lisbon or Madrid answer the same questions from the same facts. The family and its regulated managers then set the ceiling, and we run the calendar and the triggers.

The founder at the top of this piece does not need to leave the Gulf, and he does not need a family office of his own. He needs his five good decisions to become one governed position: one map, one report, one ceiling, one calendar, and one person accountable for keeping them current.

We are equally clear about where our work stops. PWA does not manage money, hold mandates, take commissions or give regulated investment, tax or legal advice. We do not recommend whether to invest in the Gulf, which assets to buy or how much to allocate. We do not replace local counsel, the bank, the corporate service provider or the tax agent. Where a question needs a licensed professional, we prepare the file, brief them and follow up until it is answered. For the broader question of how families should think about jurisdictional risk, including the Western centres they assume are safe, see our letter on jurisdictional risk; our June study of the 2026 global economy and consumer sentiment gives the mid-2026 context that this piece updates.

If you hold assets in the Gulf and cannot answer the founder’s three questions in one number, the fastest first step is a written second opinion. You send us how your wealth is organised today, including the Gulf pieces, and we send back what is fine, what is fragile and what to change first, in priority order.

Questions we hear

Is it safe to invest in Dubai in 2026?

The data says the UAE absorbed the shock better than most of its neighbours: its central bank still projects 1.6% growth for 2026, and non-oil output rose 4.8% in the first quarter. The war is not over. For a family, safety depends on how the exposure is held, with whom, in which currency, and how large it is.

How has the Iran war affected Gulf economies?

In April the IMF cut GCC growth for 2026 to 2.0%, from 4.4% in 2025. Qatar is projected to contract by 8.6%, Kuwait and Bahrain also shrink, and Oman was least affected. The World Bank was lower, at 1.3%, and by June expected the directly affected Gulf economies to grow close to zero this year.

How resilient are GCC economies?

Resilient, but unevenly. MENA sovereign wealth funds held about US$6.1 trillion in September 2026, non-oil activity made up about 79% of UAE output in 2025, and the UAE drew US$48 billion of foreign direct investment that year. The IMF still expects the most affected economies to stay about 2% below their pre-war path in 2030.

Do I need a DIFC or ADGM foundation to hold Gulf assets?

Not necessarily. A foundation is a separate legal entity, distinct from its founder, that holds assets for beneficiaries or a purpose set out in its charter. Whether a family needs one, and where, is a legal decision for licensed counsel in the UAE and at home. Our part is to place it in the family’s entity map and succession plan.

How much of a family’s wealth should sit in the Gulf?

PWA does not set allocations. The ceiling belongs in the family’s investment policy statement, agreed with its regulated managers, by jurisdiction, currency and counterparty. Our role is to make sure the ceiling exists, is measured across every bank and entity, including the Gulf accounts, and is reported on a fixed calendar with clear review triggers.

Does PWA have people on the ground in the Gulf?

PWA’s role is not to be the local professional. A Gulf exposure needs licensed local counsel, a bank, a corporate service provider and a registered tax agent, and PWA holds no licence or mandate there. We work alongside them for the family: we brief them, check their work against the whole picture and report on it in one place.

Sources

All pages opened and checked on 5 October 2026. Macro figures are as of that date; the IMF’s October 2026 World Economic Outlook and regional update had not been published when this piece was written.

Growth and outlook

• International Monetary Fund, “War in the Middle East: Economic Spillovers and Policy Challenges”, Regional Economic Outlook Update: Middle East and Central Asia, April 2026. Supports: war began 28 February 2026; ceasefire announced 7 April; Brent above $100; Hormuz carries roughly one-fifth of global oil supply (about 20–21 mb/d) and about one-quarter of global LNG trade; tanker crossings from roughly 70 a day to near zero; departures down about one-third (Abu Dhabi), two-thirds (Dubai), three-quarters (Doha), suspensions in Kuwait City and Manama; reference scenario assumes disruptions fade by mid-2026; Table 1 growth and revisions vs October 2025 (GCC 4.4% → 2.0%, −2.3 pp; Qatar −8.6%, −14.7 pp; Kuwait −0.6%, −4.5 pp; Bahrain −0.5%, −3.8 pp; Oman 3.5%, −0.5 pp; Saudi Arabia 3.1%, −0.9 pp; UAE 3.1%, −1.9 pp; MENAP 1.4%, −2.3 pp); output in 2030 about 2% below pre-war trend for the median directly affected economy; “most GCC countries have large buffers”; food import shares above 80% for Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. imf.org
• World Bank, “Conflict Hits MENAAP Economies, Underscoring Need for Action to Boost Resilience, Create Jobs”, press release, 8 April 2026. Supports: GCC growth from 4.4% (2025) to 1.3% (2026), down 3.1 pp since January. worldbank.org
• World Bank, Global Economic Prospects, press release, 11 June 2026. Supports: directly affected Gulf economies from 3.9% in 2025 to close to zero in 2026, about 5% in 2027–28; Brent assumed at $94/b in 2026. worldbank.org
• General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Saudi Arabia, 2025 GDP release, 9 March 2026. Supports: real GDP +4.5% in 2025; non-oil activities +4.9%; crude oil and natural gas 17.1% and government 14.0% of GDP at current prices. stats.gov.sa
• GASTAT, “Real Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter of 2026” (flash estimate), and Arab News, “Saudi non-oil activities up 0.6% in Q2”, 30 July 2026. Supports: real GDP −4.8% y/y; oil activities −24.7%; non-oil +0.6%; oil contribution −5.4 pp, non-oil +0.4 pp. stats.gov.sa · arabnews.com
• The National, “UAE GDP hit $517bn in 2025 as non-oil sector grew 6.8%”, 30 May 2026, reporting Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre (FCSC) data. Supports: real GDP +6.2% to AED 1.9 trillion; non-oil GDP +6.8% to AED 1.5 trillion, about 79% of GDP; construction +11.1%; finance and insurance +10.4%. thenationalnews.com
• Central Bank of the UAE, Quarterly Economic Review, September 2026. Supports: real GDP +3.0% y/y in Q1 2026; non-oil +4.8%; growth projected at 1.6% (2026) and 10.4% (2027); oil production near record highs of 3.8 mb/d in June and July 2026; resilience package cited among supports. centralbank.ae

Energy and the war

• U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, April 2026 (released 7 April 2026). Supports: Hormuz carries nearly 20% of global oil supply; Brent averaged $103/b in March, $32/b above February; almost $128/b on 2 April; attack on Ras Laffan on 18 March damaged two trains, 17% of Qatari export capacity. eia.gov
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, Global Oil Markets, 9 September 2026. Supports: flows through Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb “remain constrained and variable”; shut-ins 6.7 mb/d in August, 5.0 mb/d in July, 5.7 mb/d assumed for 4Q26; Brent $91/b in August, around $90/b in 2H26, $77/b by 2Q27. eia.gov
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint”, Today in Energy, 16 June 2025. Supports: East-West pipeline 5 mb/d (Abqaiq to Yanbu); Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline 1.8 mb/d to Fujairah; about 2.6 mb/d available to bypass the strait. eia.gov
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, “UAE’s exit from OPEC+ reduced the group’s share of crude oil production and capacity”, Today in Energy, 23 June 2026. Supports: the UAE announced on 28 April 2026 that it was leaving OPEC, effective 1 May. eia.gov
• OPEC, “Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman reaffirm commitment to market stability”, press releases of 6 September 2026 and 4 October 2026. Supports: September 2026 required production maintained for October and for November. opec.org (6 Sep) · opec.org (4 Oct)
• Xinhua, “OPEC+ continues to raise oil production by 188,000 bpd in September”, 2 August 2026. Supports: seven countries raise the September cap by 188,000 b/d, the sixth consecutive monthly increase. news.cn
• Al Jazeera, “Trump says ceasefire ‘over’, re-ups threats after US and Iran trade attacks”, 8 July 2026. aljazeera.com
• Al Jazeera, “US-Iran talks in New York: What’s the latest?”, 29 September 2026. Supports: no ceasefire in force; indirect talks via Qatari mediation; dispute over sequencing. aljazeera.com
• House of Commons Library, “US-Iran ceasefire and nuclear talks in 2026”, CBP-10637. Supports: 14-point memorandum of understanding signed 17 June 2026. commonslibrary.parliament.uk

Capital, investment and policy

• Global SWF, “Gulf SWFs frenetic activity continues despite Iran War”, 2 October 2026. Supports: MENA SWFs US$6.1 trillion AuM by September 2026, US$8.8 trillion projected by 2030; US$102 billion deployed in the first nine months of 2026, 39% of global dealmaking; Mubadala US$26.2 billion; “The Iran War may bring withdrawals and domestic focus, depending on the SWF.” globalswf.com
• UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2026, 7 July 2026, as reported by The National, “UAE among world’s top 10 recipients of FDI in 2025, UN report says”, 8 July 2026. Supports: UAE FDI inflows US$48.24 billion, +6%, ninth globally; second by greenfield project count for a third year; Saudi Arabia 13th; global FDI +6% to US$1.6 trillion; conflict likely to depress FDI near term. unctad.org · thenationalnews.com
• Dubai International Financial Centre, “Dubai International Financial Centre announces landmark annual results for 2025”, 5 February 2026. Supports: 1,115 foundations established by DIFC-based families (+66%); 1,289 family-related entities (+61%). difc.com
• Central Bank of the UAE, “CBUAE Board reviews strength and resilience of the UAE’s financial system and banking sector and approves a proactive Financial Institution Resilience Package backed by CBUAE’s assets of AED 1 trillion”, March 2026 (board meeting of 17 March 2026). Supports: five pillars of liquidity, ratio, capital-buffer and loan-classification relief. centralbank.ae
• CNBC, “Dubai scrambles to save its reputation as a haven for the rich amid U.S.-Iran war”, 5 March 2026. cnbc.com

Currency, tax and law

• Central Bank of the UAE, official exchange rates, 1 June 2026. Supports: US dollar at AED 3.6725. centralbank.ae
• Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), “SAMA Affirms Commitment to Exchange Rate Policy”, 4 May 2020. Supports: official rate of 3.75 riyals to the dollar. sama.gov.sa
• UAE Ministry of Finance, Corporate Tax. Supports: Federal Decree-Law No. 47 of 2022; financial years beginning on or after 1 June 2023; 0% on qualifying income for a Qualifying Free Zone Person; returns within nine months of the end of the tax period. mof.gov.ae
• UAE Government portal, Corporate tax. Supports: 0% up to AED 375,000 of taxable income, 9% above. u.ae
• Federal Tax Authority, “Basic Tax Information Bulletin: Free Zone Persons” (2024), and “Federal Tax Authority Issues Corporate Tax Guide on Free Zone Persons”, 26 May 2024. Supports: 0% on qualifying income; a Qualifying Free Zone Person is not eligible for the 0% rate on taxable income up to AED 375,000 and pays 9% on its entire taxable income that is not qualifying income. tax.gov.ae (bulletin) · tax.gov.ae (guide)
• UAE Ministry of Finance, Automatic Exchange of Information (FATCA and CRS). Supports: the CRS regime went live in the UAE on 1 January 2017. mof.gov.ae
• DIFC Foundations Law, DIFC Law No. 3 of 2018 (consolidated version). difc.com
• Abu Dhabi Global Market, Foundations Regulations 2017, and ADGM, “Foundations Regime”. Supports: a foundation has separate legal personality; council and optional guardian; perpetual existence after the founder’s lifetime. adgm.com (regulations) · adgm.com (regime)

The “main channel” column in the growth table, the failure points and the governance tables are PWA’s editorial reading of the sources above and of our own work, not a forecast. This article is educational. It is not investment, tax or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation to invest in, or to reduce exposure to, the Gulf or any asset.

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Pedro Souto is the founder of PWA — Private Wealth Advisory. He works with UHNW founders, families, and single-family offices to build an independent operating layer around complex wealth — combining markets, analytics, technology, and governance to turn fragmented advice into one coherent picture, and to make someone, finally, responsible for the whole of it.