Global wealth creation is entering a structural realignment. The forces that shaped the past decade abundant liquidity, synchronised growth, and ultra-low interest rates have given way to a world defined by costlier capital, technological disruption, and diverging policy regimes.

For Gulf investors, this shift demands not only portfolio rebalancing but also a more profound re-examination of risk, resilience, and return in an age of geopolitical and macroeconomic complexity.

A fragmented global investment map

Global growth has become asymmetric. The US economy continues to outperform, supported by fiscal spending and consumer demand; Europe remains constrained by weak productivity and energy costs; and China is re-engineering its growth model amid property-sector headwinds. Emerging markets are equally divided -India and Southeast Asia benefit from supply-chain diversification, while others struggle with debt sustainability.

This fragmentation has strategic implications. Correlations across regions and asset classes are weakening, restoring the value of active management and regional specialisation. The post-pandemic normalisation of interest rates has also recalibrated risk-free returns: 10-year US Treasuries, once yielding below 1 per cent, now offer yields above 4 per cent, forcing investors to reconsider the balance between growth and income.

Technology as the ‘great disruptor’

Artificial intelligence, automation, and digital infrastructure are reshaping productivity, capital allocation, and valuation frameworks. Equity markets have already priced in an “AI premium” in sectors such as semiconductors and cloud computing. Yet, beneath the surface lies a wider technological diffusion: from energy storage and climate tech to tokenised assets and algorithmic wealth platforms.

For wealth managers, technology is not just an investment theme it is a strategic enabler. Predictive analytics and behavioural data now inform personalised asset allocation; blockchain is enhancing transparency in private markets; and digital-first platforms are redefining how clients interact with advisory services. The winners in this transformation will be investors who can integrate these innovations without losing sight of governance and long-term fundamentals.

Shifting investor priorities

Investor behaviour has evolved in tandem with global volatility. Across the GCC, a younger generation of wealth holders is emerging digitally fluent, globally connected, and purpose-driven. Surveys show that over 70 per cent of high-net-worth investors under 40 in the region now prioritise sustainability and social impact alongside financial performance.

This shift is reshaping product design. The earlier ESG wave often criticised for being overly thematic is giving way to quantifiable impact investing. Investors are demanding evidence of measurable returns from green infrastructure, renewable energy, and social-housing funds. Family offices are aligning portfolios with national transformation agendas such as Saudi Vision 2030 and the UAE Net-Zero 2050 strategy, creating a feedback loop between public policy and private capital.

The evolving wealth-management model

The future of wealth management will revolve around three imperatives: personalisation, integration, and transparency.

• Personalisation will deepen through data-driven advisory. AI-based modelling can simulate multi-scenario portfolio outcomes in real time, tailoring asset mixes to client objectives and liquidity horizons.
• Integration will bridge public and private markets. Investors are increasingly combining listed equities with direct stakes in private credit, venture capital, and infrastructure to capture differentiated alpha.
• Transparency will define client relationships. In a world of abundant information, the advisory edge lies in clarity – communicating risk, fees, and strategy outcomes with institutional discipline.

For Gulf investors, this evolution coincides with regional reforms that are strengthening capital-market infrastructure and encouraging onshore wealth management. The introduction of family-office regulations, fintech sandboxes, and sustainable-finance frameworks across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh signals a new era of investor confidence and sophistication.

Strategic priorities for the next decade

The coming years will reward strategic agility. Three priorities stand out:

1. Rebalance toward tangible assets and private markets. Infrastructure, logistics, and energy transition projects offer inflation protection and long-duration visibility — key in a higher-rate world.
2. Embed optionality in portfolio design. Liquidity buffers and flexible mandates enable investors to reposition quickly as macro conditions evolve.
3. Reframe sustainability as alpha, not altruism. Decarbonisation and resource efficiency are not peripheral themes; they represent the next structural growth frontier.

From capital preservation to capital purpose

The decade ahead will be defined by how effectively investors translate uncertainty into strategy. Wealth creation will depend less on passive exposure and more on insight — understanding where structural growth will emerge and how to capture it responsibly.

For the Gulf’s investors, the opportunity is twofold: to deploy capital globally with precision, and to anchor it locally in alignment with the region’s transformation agendas. The integration of technology, sustainability, and disciplined diversification will define the next generation of successful portfolios.

In this multi-polar world, wealth management is no longer just about preservation it is about purpose, adaptability, and informed conviction.

The writer is the CEO, EMEA at Klay Group.

In today’s world, exhaustion has become a modern badge of honour, proof of drive, ambition, and relevance. Fatigue is flaunted as evidence of progress. Yet beneath this performance lies a quiet emptiness: a drought of meaning.

We mistake this inner drought for burnout, assuming rest or escape will cure it. But rest cannot refill what purpose has drained. The real crisis isn’t overwork. It’s disconnection.

Centuries ago, travellers crossed the harsh deserts of Arabia and Persia under the same blazing sun we now race beneath, theirs literal, ours metaphorical. They survived not by resisting the desert, but by aligning with its rhythm.

“The desert never kills the prepared, only the distracted.”

In leadership and life, it is not effort that destroys us, but effort without direction.

The desert as a teacher

For desert dwellers, emptiness was not punishment, it was purification. The sand stripped away illusion until only what mattered remained: purpose, rhythm, and presence.

They travelled with three invisible companions: Intention, steadiness and excellence.

These weren’t virtues, they were survival systems.

The camel of intention

“Every journey is judged not by its distance, but by the purity of its beginning.”

Before a caravan departed, its leader declared aloud why the journey mattered. When storms erased the tracks, purpose became navigation.

Modern professionals often move before they ask why. We confuse momentum with meaning. But movement without direction only deepens fatigue.

Modern practice:

• Define three meaningful actions each morning.
• Write why each matters.
• If the “why” doesn’t inspire, change the action — not the effort.

Purpose is the invisible oasis that sustains endurance. Without it, every hour turns to sand.

The camel of steadiness

“Patience is not waiting, it is walking at the right pace under the same sun.”

In the desert, haste was fatal. Caravans that sprinted in excitement collapsed before dusk. Survival depended on rhythm, effort balanced with breath.

Modern burnout is rhythm failure. We push without pulse, mistaking busyness for aliveness. Steadiness is not slowness, it’s perseverance, the pace that protects progress.

Modern practice:

• Work in 90-minute focus cycles followed by 15-minute renewal breaks.
• Schedule reflection within your day, not after it.
• Guard sleep, sunlight, and silence as strategic assets.

A leader with steadiness doesn’t move slower, they move smarter.

The camel of excellence

“Do what you do as if the divine were watching.”

In ancient markets, artisans carved even the unseen sides of their work. Why? Because beauty must exist even where eyes do not. That is excellence, doing things beautifully, not because you must, but because you can.

When people stop caring about quality, their spirit detaches from their work, and fatigue follows. Ihsan restores pride, presence, and energy by reconnecting craft with care.

Modern practice:

• Refine one task beyond necessity each week.
• End every project with a small act of grace, a reflection, a note, or gratitude.

Excellence replenishes self-respect, the ultimate renewable fuel.

The oasis mind

The oasis is not a place. It’s a state of balance.
It appears when direction, rhythm, and beauty align.

To cultivate it:

• Keep goals within believable reach.
• Celebrate small wins along long roads.
• Stay curious, curiosity is water for the mind.

When you master this, even chaos becomes climate, not crisis.

The inner desert

Every human carries a desert within, vast, silent, and demanding truth.
You can fill it with distraction, or you can walk it with awareness.

When you find intention, your steps align.
With preseverence, your pace steadies.
With excellence, your heart rehydrates.

“The desert does not burn those who walk with intention, rhythm, and beauty.
It only burns those who forget why they began.”

So walk, not faster, but truer. Carry your three camels faithfully: Intention, steadiness and excellence. Let your work be your prayer, your patience your compass, and your excellence your shade.

Then, even under the fiercest sun of ambition and doubt, you will not burn out, you will shine.

Tobacco use remains a major public health challenge across the Middle East. In seven countries often grouped for regional analysis – Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – about 61 million adults were reported consumers of tobacco products in 2024, out of a combined population of roughly 390 million. Within this context, cigarette smoking remains both deeply ingrained and a leading public health challenge.

WHO projections also indicate only a modest decline in smoking prevalence in the region through the mid-2020s, underscoring the need to complement existing tobacco-control measures with pragmatic tools that can reduce the public health burden of smoking. Such burden is often seen at its highest in low and middle-income countries, where traditional cessation methods fail to support most smokers. This is precisely why risk-proportionate harm-reduction strategies are becoming increasingly discussed as an equity issue in public health.

Harm reduction as a pillar of tobacco control

Tobacco harm reduction (THR) refers to policies and tools that aim to mitigate the adverse health effects associated with continued smoking by encouraging adult smokers who would not otherwise quit, to switch completely to smokeless alternatives with a reduced-risk profile. THR, underpinned by science-led innovation, can help reduce the population level harm associated with using tobacco.

Evidence from countries, such as Sweden, show that offering potentially reduced-risk smokeless alternatives can accelerate declines in smoking and relieve pressure on health systems.

Understanding the risk profile of smokeless products

Recent commentary in the Middle East has asserted that tobacco-free oral nicotine pouches contain numerous harmful substances and implied equivalence with smoking-related risks. However, the weight of evidence points in a different direction, underscoring the need for communications to highlight the relative risk profile of smokeless products compared with smoking, so that adult consumers receive accurate and actionable information.

Across the range of such products, tobacco-free oral nicotine pouches have emerged as particularly promising for adult smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke, offering a pathway to switch to smokeless alternatives.

These alternatives do not claim zero risk – no nicotine product is risk-free – but they do show relative risk reductions compared with continued smoking. What drives the difference? Risk tracks with exposure to smoke, not nicotine itself. Products that avoid combustion reduce exposure to smoke-borne toxicants.

This has been acknowledged by the UK Government Committee on Toxicity, who have stated that using tobacco-free oral nicotine pouches which are produced according to appropriate manufacturing standards and used as recommended “as a replacement for [conventional cigarettes] smoking, would be associated with a reduction in overall risk of adverse health effects…”.

Primarily, leading health bodies separate nicotine from combustion in assessing major health risks, noting that nicotine itself (i) is not a carcinogen; and (ii) does not contain toxic chemicals found in cigarettes. Second, at the population level, countries with high uptake of smokeless alternatives have seen sharply better health outcomes than their peers with similar nicotine exposure but higher cigarette consumption.

Furthermore, switching from cigarettes to smokeless alternatives, such as tobacco-free oral nicotine pouches, is also associated with better day-to-day oral health markers. These range from improved gum condition, reduced bacterial plaque, healthier mucosal vascularisation, increased salivary flow, and normalised breath compared with continued smoking.

Multi-country research is now quantifying these effects at scale: the SMILE trial across Italy, Poland, Moldova, and Indonesia is tracking changes in tooth colour, plaque and gingival health in adults who switch to smokeless alternatives for nicotine delivery, expecting measurable improvements in oral aesthetics and gum status.

The reduced risk profile of such pouches is further complemented by the fact that they have been adopted and are in use in 40 plus countries, offering a non-combustible, socially considerate format that avoids smoke and second-hand exposure.

Sweden’s smoke-free trajectory

Sweden is a best-practice example of how switching away from cigarettes can fundamentally reshape public health trends. Sweden has long embraced a risk-proportionate approach to smokeless alternatives, notably with tobacco-free oral nicotine pouches, which have widely been recognized as a lower-risk profile alternative for nicotine use by several government bodies and members of the public health community.

This is reflected in the fact that Sweden’s cancer incidence is 41% lower than the European average, with a corresponding 38% lower rate of total cancer deaths – underscoring the effectiveness of a THR-centred policy approach.

In fact, the country’s adult smoking rate is now about 5.3% – the lowest in Europe – and has fallen 54% over 12 years, driven by the widespread use of smokeless products, with daily use among adults standing at roughly 15.7%.

A practical path forward for the Middle East

The imperative is clear: regulate to protect youth, communicate risk proportionately, and ensure adult smokers have access to reduced-risk profile alternatives. In a region with tens of millions of smokers, the public-health opportunity is significant.

For Middle Eastern regulators faced with high health risk burdens, THR offers a complementary policy pathway that supports reductions in smoking rates and associated harms. As the Swedish experience suggests, when adult smokers have affordable, acceptable, and reduced-risk profile alternatives, smoking prevalence drops, quitting rates rise, and disease indicators improve.

By looking to best practices worldwide, the region can adopt a similar approach to reduce the health burden associated with combustible tobacco use.

International Holding Company (IHC) said on Thursday it has sold its entire 42.54 per cent stake in Modon Holding to L’imad Holding Company, a wholly owned entity of the Abu Dhabi government, as part of efforts to rebalance its portfolio and reinforce diversification.

The transaction forms part of IHC’s active portfolio management strategy, which limits exposure to any single sector to below 20 per cent.

The company said the sale will unlock additional liquidity to reinvest in priority sectors such as healthcare, technology, energy, food and agriculture, and financial services.

Modon brought in robust revenues in 2024, IHC said

Since acquiring its stake in Modon in August 2023, IHC said the real estate and infrastructure developer has achieved multi-billion-dirham revenue and profitability in 2024, with momentum continuing into H1 2025.

The company cited strong real estate sales and a robust revenue backlog as indicators of Modon’s performance.

“This sale reflects our disciplined approach to capital allocation and our commitment to maintaining a well-balanced, diversified portfolio,” said Syed Basar Shueb, CEO of IHC. “While we continue to see attractive fundamentals in real estate, our strategy is to avoid over-concentration in any single sector.”

IHC, one of the Middle East’s most valuable holding companies with a market capitalisation of Dhs881.6bn ($239.9bn), said it would continue to assess new investment opportunities that support sustainable long-term growth and resilient cash flows.

Read: Abu Dhabi’s IHC acquires majority stake in Pakistan’s First Women Bank