Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute has announced the postponement of the tenth edition of its flagship investment conference, originally scheduled to take place in Riyadh from October 26 to 29, 2026.

The event, FII10, themed “The Power of Legacy”, will now be held in 2027, with organisers expected to announce revised dates soon.

In a statement, HRH Princess Dr. Maha Bint Mishari Al Saud, CEO of the FII Institute, said the decision was taken to ensure the landmark edition meets the expectations of its international community of investors, business leaders and policymakers.

“Because this is our landmark tenth edition, we want to ensure it delivers the full scale, extraordinary quality, and unforgettable impact that our community has come to expect and truly deserves,” she said.

“A decade of partnership and shared vision deserves nothing less than our absolute best.”

The institute confirmed that all existing registrations and partnerships will remain valid despite the postponement.

Organisers will contact registered delegates, partners and other stakeholders directly over the coming days to provide further assistance and address queries regarding the revised arrangements.

“We are profoundly grateful to our community for your continued trust, patience, and friendship. We cannot wait to welcome you home to Riyadh in 2027 for a truly special and memorable FII10,” Princess Maha added.

The annual FII conference, also known as ‘Davos in the Desert’, has emerged as a major platform for international investment discussions, bringing together sovereign wealth funds, global financial institutions, corporate executives and government officials to explore investment opportunities and economic transformation.

The conference is closely associated with Saudi Arabia’s efforts to attract international capital, diversify its economy and strengthen its position as a global investment destination under Vision 2030.

The postponement comes amid escalating security concerns in Saudi Arabia following a series of missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group.

Recent attacks, including a deadly strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, have disrupted air travel and raised concerns among international investors and business executives planning to visit the kingdom.

The Gulf Business Investment Summit 2026 will take place on October 30 at the Grand Plaza Mövenpick Media City in Dubai, bringing together investment professionals, financial experts and industry leaders to examine the trends shaping global capital allocation.

Held under the theme ‘Where Capital Goes Next’, the summit will explore how investors are navigating geopolitical uncertainty, changing interest-rate dynamics, technological disruption and the emergence of new investment opportunities.

The half-day event will feature a series of panel discussions examining global capital flows, artificial intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, private markets and asset tokenisation.

Register here.

Investment leaders to share insights

The summit will feature a lineup of confirmed speakers, including Wissam Breidy, Founder and CEO of BRDG House; Bader Al Sarraf, Research Analyst and Associate Director, Global Research at Standard Chartered; and Varun Kapur, Director at KAPITAL by KLEBER GROUP.

Other confirmed speakers include Alister Wellesley, CEO of EA MENA; Sapan Agarwal, Global Senior Vice President, Commercial Strategy & Key Accounts at Frost & Sullivan; Salmaan Khawaja, Partner and Head of Financial Advisory at Grant Thornton UAE; and Raven Groom-Baker, Managing Director at Aquanow, and many more.

AI, private markets and tokenisation in focus

The summit will open with a keynote titled ‘Where Capital Goes Next’, setting the stage for discussions on the economic, geopolitical and technological forces influencing investment decisions.

The first panel, ‘The Great Capital Reset’, will explore how investors are repositioning portfolios amid shifting global markets, while ‘The Next Trillion-Dollar Opportunities’ will examine investment prospects across the AI ecosystem, including semiconductors, robotics, cybersecurity and enterprise applications.

Another session will focus on the infrastructure underpinning the AI economy, highlighting opportunities in data centres, energy, connectivity and digital infrastructure.

The programme will also examine the growing importance of private equity, private credit and alternative investments, alongside the potential for tokenisation to transform asset ownership, trading and accessibility.

The $1bn investment debate

A key highlight will be the closing session, ‘The $1bn Debate: If You Had $1bn to Invest Today…’, which will challenge five investment figures to allocate hypothetical $1bn portfolios across equities, credit, private markets, infrastructure, real estate, commodities, digital assets and cash.

Participants will defend their investment strategies and debate which asset classes could deliver the strongest returns over the next decade.

The Gulf Business Investment Summit 2026 will begin with registration and networking at 8am, followed by the main programme from 8.30am to 11.30am.

Event details: October 30, 2026 | Grand Plaza Mövenpick Media City, Dubai | 8am–11.30am.

A successful mobile banking login does not necessarily mean a customer’s session remains secure, cybersecurity company protectt.ai. warned on Monday, urging financial institutions to monitor risks continuously before money or sensitive data moves.

The mobile application security, fraud prevention and digital trust company said fraudsters were increasingly working around authentication by manipulating customers or compromising their devices after access had been granted.

A customer could use a bank’s genuine application on a registered phone and log in with valid credentials while a remote-access tool, screen-sharing application, overlay or another form of compromise allowed someone else to observe, influence or control activity during the session, it said.

The advisory comes as UAE financial institutions expand mobile-first services, instant payments and connected financial experiences. Protectt.ai said banks needed to reassess trust across the application, device and transaction throughout each session.

Fraud risk beyond the login screen

Research by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, conducted with Trend Micro and published on January 27, surveyed 1,000 UAE residents. One in three respondents reported losing money to scams in the preceding year, across digital and communication channels. The finding concerns scams broadly, rather than mobile banking fraud alone.

Separately, Gartner’s public abstract for its August 3 research, How to Enhance Application Security by Deploying Application Detection and Response, argued that application security testing and frontline controls alone were insufficient. It highlighted the need to protect applications while they are running.

“Authentication confirms that a recognised customer has entered the application. It cannot, on its own, confirm that the device and the session remain safe throughout the transaction. Banks need visibility into what is happening while the application is running so they can recognise risky conditions and intervene before fraud is completed,” said Manish Mimani, founder and CEO of Protectt.ai.

The company identified potential warning signals including remote-control or screen-sharing tools operating during banking sessions, rooted or jailbroken devices, screen overlays, application cloning, runtime hooking and attempts to tamper with application behaviour.

Such conditions can emerge or change after authentication, making a single security decision at login less reliable as a session continues, it said.

When a transfer needs another check

Protectt.ai recommended treating device integrity as part of transaction risk.

A high-value transfer from a device showing signs of remote control, tampering, or abnormal execution should carry a different risk profile than the same transfer on a healthy device, it said.

Banks should also connect security signals detected within applications to their fraud and transaction-monitoring systems.

Assessing those technical indicators alongside behavioural and transactional anomalies could help institutions decide whether to allow an action, request further verification, pause a transaction or suspend a session.

“Mobile applications are now the primary financial front door for many customers in the UAE. The challenge is to protect that experience without adding unnecessary friction. A risk-based response allows banks to intervene proportionately when the application or device shows signs of compromise while keeping routine journeys smooth for genuine customers,” said Pushkar Singh, country head, Middle East and Africa at Protectt.ai.

The company said visibility into applications while they are running complemented existing investment in secure development, identity, network defence, application programming interfaces and transaction monitoring.

Detecting manipulation or unsafe device conditions during use could allow a bank to intervene while a session remained active, rather than investigating only after a fraudulent payment had been completed.

Protectt.ai, which operates across India, the Middle East and North Africa, Southeast Asia and the US, said it covered more than 350 sensitive mobile applications and over one billion unique devices, had safeguarded more than 100 billion sessions and had prevented over eight billion threats.

Zamzam Al Hammadi is 18. She is the UAE’s first female professional MMA fighter, and she says that also makes her the oldest Emirati woman in the sport.

I’m the oldest in MMA now. I’m 18 years old only,” she says. In 2023, the year she became a jiu-jitsu youth world champion, she recalls feeling isolated: “I really didn’t have any friends.”

Each woman on the stage at Middlesex University Dubai‘s Knowledge Park campus on September 30 had faced some version of that. The session, titled We Emerge Stronger and Better: Identity, Heritage & the Next Generation, opened Women in Sport: Changing the Narrative and Breaking Boundaries.

The three-part series is run by the university’s London Sport Institute in Dubai, and its focus goes beyond medals: it asks how more women and girls in the region can take part in sport, keep progressing and build careers in the industry.

“Sporting achievements deserve to be celebrated, but it is just as important to look at the opportunities, support systems and pathways that make those achievements possible,” said Charvi Ajay Bhatt, sports partnerships and development executive at MDX Dubai, in a statement. “Through this series, we aim to create an ongoing conversation around how more women can participate in sport, continue progressing, and build meaningful careers across the sector.”

Emirati weightlifter and mental health advocate Amna Al Haddad moderated. With her were Al Hammadi, who also fights for PFL MENA; Maryam Alfarsi, the first Emirati woman to sprint at the Olympic Games; Maha Al Shehhi, the national team swimmer who competed at Paris 2024; and snowboarder Amenah Almuhairi, who has represented the UAE at the Asian Winter Games and the Youth Olympic Games. Gulf Business spoke to them on the day.

Starting from nothing

Some found their sport by accident. Almuhairi started because of her mother. She and her siblings learned to ski, and on a family trip to Bosnia, when she was seven, she switched to snowboarding. She started competing at 13.

“It’s not a very common thing to hear that a person from the UAE, especially, is a freestyle snowboarder,” she says. “But I think we do really need to set the standard that we can do whatever we set our minds to, no matter any challenges.”

When Al Shehhi started, she had no swimmers to look up to. “It’s been a challenge for me at the beginning because there was never anyone who did the sport, but now there are many youngsters who are starting to swim,” she says.

She trains in the morning and again in the afternoon, with gym sessions in between, and has done so for seven years. She says it changed her. “It changed me into a whole different woman, a whole different person that I am today. I became more mentally strong. I’m able to speak up for myself.”

Proving a point

When you represent the UAE in a sport nobody links with the country, you spend a lot of time explaining. For Almuhairi, that is the main downside of snowboarding: “having to constantly repeat myself in the way of showing my country in a different light to what a lot of people that don’t live in Dubai have an image of. But I love it.”

Al Hammadi works in a sport she calls male-dominated, and she carries the same sense of responsibility into every fight. “I’m not representing myself,” she says. She sees herself as fighting for her country and for Emirati women. She would also rather her record spoke than she did: “The achievement, it talks, not me.”

Her results are now drawing other girls in. She says 25 girls she helped train competed at world championships this year, and all of them won medals. “They were like, Zamzam, we joined because of you.”

Al Shehhi has heard similar things from young swimmers at competitions. One girl told her: “My father saw you and I told him I could swim.”

The athletes agree that things are better than they were, and that much of the change is recent.

Alfarsi ran the 100 metres at Paris 2024 aged 16. “I think the sports in the UAE have changed dramatically, and we have so much room to go,” she says. “We’re still new at this, so there’s so much more room for improvement here.”

Al Haddad names two changes: “There is more acceptance and more access, and that is a great step forward.”

What still needs to change

The bigger problem, Al Haddad says, is keeping athletes in sport long enough to reach their potential. “There is still no sustainability in retaining athletes in the region for the long haul,” she says. In her view, building an athlete takes decades, not a few seasons, and it needs funding, sponsorship, good coaches, proper facilities, sport science and sports psychology.

Funding is a constant worry. “As athletes, we chase funding a lot to pay for competition entries, to fund our flights, our training, our coach,” she says. Coaching can be hard to find as well. Al Haddad started weightlifting later than most. Coaches in the UAE were focused on younger athletes and didn’t know how to train her. “I personally had to travel abroad for a year and a half to train to get proper training in Olympic weightlifting,” she says.

Education came up too. Almuhairi studies at the London Sport Institute in Dubai, and on the panel she explained how a flexible timetable lets her fit her studies around training and competitions. The panel argued that young athletes shouldn’t have to choose between university and sport. Almuhairi came to the interview straight from a full day of classes.

She thinks girls in niche sports need the most help. “We really need to put an emphasis on support for girls, but especially girls in unconventional sports,” she says. “It is the only way that we’ll see any more upcoming female athletes.”

For Alfarsi, the answer is visibility. “The more that you see it, the more that people obviously don’t look at it as more of a stereotype, but more as a norm,” she says. “I think that’s very important for families to see here in the UAE.”

Families are also where Al Shehhi still meets resistance. “There’s still some close-minded here and there,” she says. Her message to parents is to let their daughters compete, “because you never know, maybe she’ll become world champion”.

For some of them, sport is only part of the plan. Alfarsi has started an edtech company with a co-founder and turns 19 in a few months. “I think my journey is getting started,” she says.

Al Hammadi wants to compete internationally at senior level, and she wants other women her age alongside her. “My mission now is to see someone who’s as old as me come and support me to pave the way more for women in sports.”

The series has two more sessions planned in the coming months. Women’s Health: Training Through Every Life Stage will cover wellbeing and exercise through different stages of life. Breaking Into the Game: Women’s Careers On and Off the Field will look at jobs for women across the sports industry, not only for athletes.

In their words

Asked what they would say to the next generation, each gave a short answer.

“If you can dream it, you can do it. There are no limitations other than your mind.” – Amenah Almuhairi

“Don’t confine yourself to other people’s expectations.” – Maryam Alfarsi

“If you have a dream, go for it and achieve it.” – Zamzam Al Hammadi

“You don’t need permission. Go for it… Do it because your story matters.” – Amna Al Haddad

Abu Dhabi took its investment pitch to London’s financial heavyweights last week, armed with a striking figure: 14 global financial institutions managing more than $5tn in assets had announced plans to establish a presence in the emirate during the first half of 2026.

Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi, chairman of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), delivered the message at the third Abu Dhabi Investment Forum on October 15, as the emirate stepped up efforts to attract international capital and deepen ties with British investors.

“We have the capacity to invest for decades, and the agility to act today,” Al Zaabi told the gathering.

Held at The Peninsula London and organised by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), the forum brought together senior investors, financial institutions and business leaders to explore opportunities in the emirate. Last year’s edition attracted around 400 participants, including representatives of approximately 180 UK institutions.

Al Zaabi’s address offered a glimpse of Abu Dhabi’s ambitions to become a leading international financial centre, backed by long-term capital, competitive energy costs and an expanding non-oil economy.

The $5tn figure reflects the combined global assets under management of institutions planning to enter ADGM, rather than money committed to Abu Dhabi.

It builds on an announcement in May, when ADGM said eight financial institutions managing $4.4tn had unveiled expansion plans during March and April.

Capital Group, Man Group, Bain Capital, Barings and Hillhouse Investment are among the prominent investment firms that have announced plans or established operations in ADGM this year.

Why Abu Dhabi is attracting attention

Abu Dhabi’s push to attract global financial firms comes as the emirate climbs the rankings of the world’s leading financial centres.

In September, it jumped eight places to 13th in the Global Financial Centres Index, compiled by London-based consultancy Z/Yen and the China Development Institute.

ADGM has also reported a surge in activity. Assets under management rose 54 per cent year-on-year during the first half of 2026, while the number of fund and asset managers climbed 23 per cent to 190.

The London pitch comes against a backdrop of deepening commercial ties between the UAE and Britain. Bilateral trade reached £25bn in 2025, according to the UK Department for Business and Trade, making the UAE Britain’s largest trading partner in the Gulf.

But Al Zaabi stressed that attracting international capital required more than investment opportunities alone.

“Because capital needs more than opportunity,” he said. “It needs clarity to make decisions, confidence in the rules, and the speed to move.”

He pointed to ADGM’s direct application of English Common Law, independent courts and regulatory framework as advantages for international firms considering a regional base.

Beyond financial services, Abu Dhabi is also betting on artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, energy and life sciences to drive its next phase of growth.

Al Zaabi said the emirate’s economy expanded 7 per cent in 2025, with non-oil activity growing 8 per cent and accounting for more than half of GDP.

The chairman closed with a broader message about how Abu Dhabi intends to measure the success of its investment strategy.

“Our measure of progress is not simply how much capital comes to Abu Dhabi, but how much opportunity that capital creates,” he said.

Read the ADGM chairman’s full speech below

Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi, Abu Dhabi Investment Forum, London, October 15, 2026

Your Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning.

It is a pleasure to return to London for the third Abu Dhabi Investment Forum.

Abu Dhabi is playing an increasingly influential role in the global economy.

Not only through the scale of our investments, but through the industries we are advancing, the enterprises we are enabling, and the markets we are reaching.

In 2025, Abu Dhabi’s economy grew by 7%, and our non-oil economy grew by 8%, contributing more than half of total GDP.

Across artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, energy, and life sciences, we are developing industries that will shape future markets.

Our businesses are extending their international reach, establishing partnerships, and entering new markets.

Abu Dhabi has long-term capital, competitive energy, world-class infrastructure, and access to some of the world’s fastest-growing markets.

We have the capacity to invest for decades, and the agility to act today.

Because capital needs more than opportunity.

It needs clarity to make decisions, confidence in the rules, and the speed to move.

This is the foundation of our approach to the speed of doing business.

Removing barriers, accelerating decisions, and enabling enterprises to invest, expand, and operate internationally.

We see these advantages reflected in Abu Dhabi’s financial sector.

ADGM operates under the direct application of English Common Law.

Supported by independent courts and a regulatory framework that uphold transparency, fairness, and the enforceability of commercial rights.

And global institutions are responding.

In the first half of 2026 alone, fourteen major financial institutions, collectively managing over 5 trillion dollars in assets worldwide, announced plans to set up in ADGM.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Abu Dhabi has always taken the long view.

Our leadership has built the foundations of an economy designed not only to compete today, but to create prosperity for generations to come.

And as we look ahead, our measure of progress is not simply how much capital comes to Abu Dhabi, but how much opportunity that capital creates.

For businesses to expand,
industries to advance,
and people to prosper.

We invite you to be part of that future.

Thank you.