Abu Dhabi-listed International Holding Company (IHC) has confirmed Fount Trust as its ultimate parent following a restructuring above Royal Group, while its ultimate beneficial ownership remained unchanged.

Royal Group will continue to exist and operate under the new structure, IHC said, adding that the restructuring would not affect its operations, strategy or business activities.

The ownership chain remains unchanged up to Royal Group. Pal Group of Companies remains the majority shareholder of IHC, while Royal Group remains the majority shareholder of Pal Group. Fount Trust now sits above Royal Group as its ultimate parent.

IHC said the restructuring was designed to provide continuity of ownership and long-term stewardship across generations.

The company will continue to be governed by its board and managed by its executive team under its existing corporate governance framework. It remains subject to reporting, disclosure and governance requirements applicable to companies listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.

“Our responsibility is to build an institution capable of creating value over generations,” IHC chief executive Syed Basar Shueb said.

“The establishment of Fount Trust provides a framework for long-term stewardship, while Royal Group continues to operate and fulfil its role within the ownership structure,” he added.

IHC said the structure was intended to provide a consistent framework for long-term investment and ownership while allowing authorised decision-makers to respond to changing markets and opportunities.

The Abu Dhabi investment company has a market capitalisation of about Dhs840bn ($229bn) and operates through more than 1,300 subsidiaries spanning technology, infrastructure, financial services and consumer businesses, according to company figures.

The restructuring does not result in any change to IHC’s ultimate beneficial owner, the company said.

Dubai has announced funeral and condolence arrangements following the death of Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with the funeral prayer scheduled for Tuesday at 1:00pm at Za’abeel Grand Mosque in Dubai.

The Dubai Ruler’s Court also announced a 10-day period of official mourning in the emirate, during which flags will be flown at half-mast.

Funeral and condolence arrangements

The funeral prayer for Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum will take place at Za’abeel Grand Mosque at 1:00pm on Tuesday.

Condolences will be received at the Za’abeel Majlis for three days, beginning Tuesday. On Tuesday, the condolence period will run from 4:00pm until Maghrib prayer.

Read more: Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid dies as Dubai declares 10-day mourning

On Wednesday and Thursday, condolences will be received during the morning from 10:00 a.m. until Dhuhr prayer, and again in the evening following Asr prayer until Maghrib prayer.

The announcements followed the death of Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on Monday, September 21, 2026.

Presidential Court extends condolences

The Presidential Court mourned the passing of Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and extended its condolences to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, as well as the Al Maktoum family.

In a statement, the Presidential Court expressed its sincere condolences and sympathy, praying to Almighty Allah to grant the deceased His boundless mercy and forgiveness and to grant his family patience and solace, a WAM report said.

Rulers’ Courts across the UAE pay tribute

The Court of His Highness Sheikh Humaid bin Rashid Al Nuaimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Ajman, also mourned Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

In a statement, the Ajman Ruler’s Court extended its sincere condolences and sympathies to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and the Al Maktoum family, praying to Allah Almighty to grant the deceased a place in Paradise and to grant his family patience and solace.

The Court of Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, also expressed its condolences following the death.

The Sharjah Ruler’s Court extended its sincere condolences and sympathy to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deceased’s family and loved ones, and the wider Al Maktoum family. It prayed for Allah Almighty to grant the deceased mercy and forgiveness and his family patience and solace.

Dubai declares official mourning

The Court of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, announced the 10-day period of official mourning following Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s passing.

The mourning period began Monday, with flags across Dubai to be flown at half-mast.

Condolences also came from leaders across the region and beyond.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques conveyed condolences to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on the passing of Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The Syrian President, Indian Prime Minister, Emir of Qatar, Emir of Kuwait, King of Bahrain and Sultan of Oman likewise extended condolences to UAE leaders and the Al Maktoum family.

The messages reflected the broad regional response to the death, with leaders expressing sympathy to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and the deceased’s family.

A single air-defence missile can cost $3m to shoot down a $20,000 drone. For Rodrigo Torres, that lopsided maths captures how much modern conflict has changed, and it is precisely the kind of shift EDGE has built itself to exploit.

In little more than six years, the Abu Dhabi group has gone from a government drive to consolidate the UAE’s scattered defence firms into one of the world’s leading defence and technology companies, with around $5bn in revenue, a backlog above $20bn and over 18,000 people across what Torres describes as more than 40 companies.

Much of that growth has come from abroad: 25 transactions spanning M&A and joint ventures, orders across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, and a fast-expanding push into Europe and NATO.

Torres, who joined at EDGE‘s founding in 2019 after 21 years at General Electric, has helped steer that expansion as president and group CFO. In a conversation with Gulf Business editor Neesha Salian, he discussed the group’s ambitions overseas, the partnership model behind its speed, how it is building supply-chain resilience, and why he is convinced the surge in global defence spending is a decade-long structural shift rather than a bubble.

How do you balance commercial performance with international expansion and the country’s strategic priorities?
The government’s vision in 2019 was to aggregate the country’s defence companies to improve sovereign capability and avoid fragmentation. At the time, each was largely a single-product business, with varied origins, some born from offsets, others family-owned.

Six years on, we’ve made significant progress on that consolidation, but we’ve also expanded abroad through 25 transactions, split between M&A and joint ventures.

Our mandate has shifted from building domestic service capability to driving international growth, and we’re now among the world’s leading defence companies and still growing fast.

What does the revenue mix look like today?
Our intake is currently around 70 per cent international and 30 per cent local. Revenue takes longer to reflect that shift, since projects typically run three to five years from order to delivery.

As a result, revenue today is still weighted more towards local at roughly 80-20, and we expect that to move to around 70-30 next year as international projects mature.

How should investors read the size and quality of your international backlog?
It’s very healthy, and these are signed orders. In Angola, we’re building the navy almost from scratch, which includes three large vessels, drones and interceptors.

We signed a strong contract to deliver nationwide surveillance programmes with several countries across Africa and South America, and in Brazil we’re supplying the weaponisation and missile capability for four new frigates.

Just recently, we received an order from a NATO country for our armoured vehicles. Our backlog was initially concentrated in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia; we’re now expanding into Europe as well.

What’s the thinking behind the European push?
Our footprint already includes companies in Estonia, Switzerland, Poland, a recent acquisition in Italy and a joint venture in Spain. We used those capabilities to win orders outside NATO, and now the idea is to generate business inside NATO too, with a commercial base in Paris.

Europe isn’t only pushing defence budgets towards 5 per cent, there’s also financing coming through Brussels. Even though our backlog there isn’t large yet, we believe we need to invest ahead of demand, so that the groundwork is already in place by the time orders materialise.

How are you prioritising investment in AI, autonomous systems and advanced technologies?
We have a strong local team and benefit from the Abu Dhabi ecosystem, TII and the wider AI landscape, but we also look to Europe, Latin America and South Africa.

Even with a large portfolio, we always concentrate investment on a few key areas: electronic warfare, communication systems, smart weapons, and autonomy.

Our recent acquisition of AKAER in Brazil is a good example: it brings capability in designing supersonic and stealth aircraft, built around an engineering centre rather than manufacturing, which benefits the whole group.

Defence spending has become a priority. How is EDGE capturing that while keeping financial discipline?
We were roughly a billion-dollar company; we’re now five billion, and our international backlog has grown around 400 per cent from a standing start.

We can’t outmatch decades of legacy competition alone, so we’ve done it through the right partnerships.

In the last two years, joint ventures and M&A alone captured around $2.5bn of orders, roughly 10 per cent of our intake. That includes what we’ve done with Fincantieri and Leonardo in Italy, and Indra in Spain, making ourselves and our partners successful.

How is EDGE building supply-chain resilience while scaling globally?
Recent conflicts made clear that we cannot rely entirely on external sources, so we classify our supply chain by criticality.

Class A covers the most critical subsystems, which we develop and manufacture domestically or within one of our companies abroad. Class B is important but less critical, so it becomes a make or buy decision based on the circumstances. Class C covers commodity items that any qualified supplier can provide.

What are your priorities for the next three to five years?
Our ambition is to become a top 10 global player. That means growing significantly while keeping the mentality of a startup. Top 10 in scale, but agile in mindset, with strong partnerships and a solid global footprint.

Ultimately, we want to be recognised as a technology company: big in reach, but agile in how we operate.

With this many partnerships, how do you stay agile day to day?
Strong governance is a given, but we try to trust people. Having worked at a large global corporation before this, I saw checks and balances sometimes taken to an extreme. One example: in all our acquisitions we’ve never replaced the founder as CEO, we keep them running the company, which creates the speed to decide quickly.

Our chairman, Faisal Al Bannai, is a huge promoter of agility. When you become big you can become slow, and we work hard not to.

What are the main challenges you’re tackling?
The biggest challenge is integration, we’re now more than 40 companies, and full integration isn’t there yet, the task ahead is bringing the group’s full horsepower together.

Second, some see the current defence spending surge as a bubble. I don’t, and even if it is, it’s a ten year one, not a short-term spike. The more pressing question is what kind of company EDGE becomes: a technology company with a strong defence portfolio, like Thales or Leonardo, or a defence contractor built primarily around military platforms, like Rheinmetall or Lockheed Martin.

Third, and this is really an opportunity rather than a challenge, we’re deeply multicultural, with more than 95 nationalities, which brings huge richness in experience and background across the group.

As a government-backed company with global ambitions, is it hard to stay aligned with national objectives?
Honestly, I don’t see it as a challenge, it only looks like one from outside.

We operate as a commercial company, but every major defence peer also has national programmes at their core, Leonardo, Indra, Rheinmetall, Thales included. Having that national mandate doesn’t limit our global ambitions, if anything it strengthens them, since many of our international contracts, including in Africa and the recent $7bn Indonesia announcement, are themselves government-to-government agreements.

Which markets matter most, and where is the industry heading?
On backlog, Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia remain our core markets, with NATO becoming increasingly important going forward.

We’re also looking closely at law enforcement, which in some countries rivals defence in scale. Brazil, for instance, has more than 350,000 police officers, and demand there is strong for surveillance and AI capabilities.

As for where systems themselves are heading, the economics of warfare have shifted. An air-defence missile can cost $3m to intercept a $20,000 drone, a cost imbalance that isn’t sustainable at scale. That means the priority now is fielding large quantities of lower-cost systems that can be sustained over long, drawn-out conflicts.

There’s also a major investment in connectivity, the ability to link all your forces together.

Finally, decision-making is increasingly driven by AI, which holds a live picture of the adversary and allows far more informed decisions to be made, faster.

Abu Dhabi-based developer Eagle Hills has signed a commercial terms agreement with the Maldives government for a waterfront and marina development valued at around $12bn across multiple phases, the company said on Monday.

The Maldives Waterfront and Marina will be developed in the Ras Malé area as an integrated tourism, residential and commercial destination. The agreement sets out the project’s shared vision and principal commercial terms, with detailed terms to be developed as it progresses.

Plans include international hotels and resorts, premium and branded residences, a marina, waterfront leisure, retail, dining, entertainment and wellness facilities, alongside education, healthcare and community infrastructure.

“The Maldives is a truly special place, with unmatched beauty and global appeal,” Eagle Hills chairman Mohamed Alabbar said.

Properties will be offered under a long-term leasehold framework governed by Maldivian law, with terms of up to 99 years. A new lease term of up to 99 years will begin upon each transfer, including through sale or inheritance.

The project will be built on reclaimed land, with Eagle Hills saying it will undertake no further dredging. Independent marine monitoring is planned during construction.

Maldives’ largest investment programme

Maldives Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development Minister Abdulla Muththalib described it as the country’s largest investment programme and said it would bring foreign investment, jobs and government revenue without tax concessions or government borrowing.

Eagle Hills said the development was expected to support economic activity across hospitality, construction, retail, marine services and technology, while strengthening local supply chains and creating direct and indirect employment.

Eagle Hills is a privately held Abu Dhabi-based real estate investment and development company chaired by Alabbar, who is also the founder of Dubai-listed Emaar Properties.

Eagle Hills has projects across markets including the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Serbia, Albania, Morocco, Ethiopia and Croatia.

For decades, industrial progress in the region has been measured in automation: systems that follow predefined rules, reliably and at scale. That era is giving way to something more ambitious. With cloud computing, 5G connectivity and AI processing power now in place, businesses across the Middle East are beginning to move beyond connected operations toward autonomous ones, where systems do not just follow instructions but respond to changing conditions in real time.

The distinction matters. Where automation follows fixed instructions, autonomous systems sense, interpret and act on changing conditions, while people retain oversight and concentrate on higher-value decisions. And the pressures pushing companies down this path are real: skilled-labour shortages, ageing infrastructure, rising energy costs, tighter emissions targets and the quiet loss of expertise as veteran workers retire. Governments and businesses are responding with heavy investment in intelligent operations across industry, airports, energy, healthcare, data centres and smart cities, from an AI-powered control room with Borouge in Ruwais to the sensor-driven management of Msheireb Downtown Doha.

Honeywell Technologies is helping to steer that shift across the region. Its president for the Middle East, Africa, Türkiye and Central Asia, George Bou Mitri, spoke to Gulf Business about the “Three Ds” underpinning autonomy, why it has become a strategic priority, and how businesses can build a phased, safe and measurable path toward it. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

What does the transition from automation to autonomy mean for businesses today?
Rapid advances in cloud computing, 5G connectivity and AI processing power have established an infrastructure capable of supporting a path to autonomy. We are now at an inflection point, where businesses can build on that digital infrastructure to apply AI and progress from connected operations toward greater autonomy.

While traditional automation follows predefined rules, autonomous systems are designed to interpret changing circumstances and support or execute decisions. These systems can sense, decide and act within defined parameters, while people retain oversight and focus on higher-value decision-making.
Honeywell Technologies is building on decades of automation experience in the region to help customers make assets work harder, people work smarter and processes work more efficiently.

Why is autonomy becoming a strategic priority for businesses across the Middle East?
Autonomy is becoming a strategic priority because organisations across the region are managing increasingly complex operations while facing pressure to improve efficiency, reduce emissions, strengthen resilience and maintain competitiveness. The business case is also being strengthened by the retirement of experienced workers who take decades of operational knowledge with them. Autonomous systems can help preserve expertise while enabling personnel to focus on higher-value work.

Honeywell Technologies understands the environment customers are operating in today, with skilled labour shortages, ageing infrastructure, rising energy costs and increasing operational complexity commonplace. These pressures are accelerating demand for a phased path toward autonomous operations. PwC research found that 73 per cent of Middle East manufacturers expect data capture and analytics to be automated to a large or very large extent over the next five years.

Governments and businesses in the region are investing in connected, intelligent operations across industrial infrastructure, airports, energy, healthcare, data centres and smart-city developments, reflecting growing demand. One example is Msheireb Downtown Doha, where an AI-powered platform is being deployed to optimise urban operations, integrate thousands of sensors into a single point of control and support more intelligent city management. These capabilities will enable live monitoring, predictive maintenance, automated incident management and enhanced operational planning across the city.

What are the biggest opportunities and challenges organisations face as they move toward autonomous operations?
Central to the journey toward autonomy is what Honeywell Technologies calls the “Three Ds”: data, domain knowledge and deterministic AI. Through Honeywell Forge, Honeywell Technologies connects fragmented data with domain expertise and control systems so insights can support coordinated action across operations.

Domain knowledge is equally important. Organisations need a deep understanding of how assets operate both physically and digitally. Deterministic AI provides the final component by delivering the reliability required in mission-critical environments where performance, safety and uptime are essential. Together, the

Three Ds provide the foundation for safe, reliable and scalable autonomous operations.

The challenge is that many facilities still operate fragmented OT and IT environments. Successfully scaling autonomy requires secure, open platforms capable of managing data across diverse systems while maintaining strong cybersecurity.

How is AI accelerating the shift from automation to autonomy?
AI is accelerating the shift from automation to autonomy by helping organisations move from reactive operations to predictive and increasingly autonomous decision-making.

In the UAE, Honeywell Technologies, in collaboration with Borouge, successfully completed a proof of concept for AI-powered autonomous operations in Ruwais, supporting the development of an AI-driven control room designed for full-scale, real-time operation.

In Qatar, Honeywell Technologies is also supporting Msheireb Properties, a flagship smart city project, to help optimise urban operations and enhance the quality of life for all residents and visitors. These examples show how AI is already helping organisations accelerate their path to autonomy while improving operational performance.

What do businesses need to get right to successfully adopt autonomous technologies at scale?
The most important step is understanding where you are today. Honeywell Technologies encourages organisations to begin with an assessment of existing systems, digital maturity and operational gaps. This helps ensure the autonomy journey is focused, phased and tied to business requirements.

This assessment leads to a phased roadmap tied to measurable outcomes such as increased production, improved efficiency, reduced downtime and lower operating costs.

Autonomy is a phased progression built on existing automation investments, connected technologies, workforce capability and clearly defined business outcomes.
Organisations should focus on the operational challenges they want to solve and access the relevant data related to those operations. They can begin with the data that is available, provided they understand existing gaps and create a roadmap aligned with their current systems and connectivity.

Safety and cybersecurity must remain central throughout the process.

Looking ahead, what will the future of autonomy look like across the Middle East, and what impact will it have on industries in the region?
The future of autonomy across the region will be driven by connected technologies, workforce capability and clearly defined business outcomes.

Across the Middle East, autonomy will play an increasing role across industrial facilities, airports, hospitals, data centres and smart-city developments.

Investments will increasingly focus on AI-driven analytics, cloud-enabled platforms and software-led services that deliver predictive insights and operational intelligence.

Autonomy will also play an important role in addressing workforce challenges. The right form of AI can help a worker with two years of experience perform tasks with the insight of a 30-year veteran by drawing on historical records, predictive models and guided workflows. This helps reduce human error, maintain uptime and preserve operational knowledge.

Ultimately, autonomy is designed to augment people by combining human judgment with AI-enabled insight and action. Honeywell Technologies is helping customers advance their path to autonomy through more effective assets, more efficient processes and enhanced workforce capabilities, so they can make every day their best day of operations.