Author: Arabian Media staff

Image courtesy: WAM/ For illustrative purposes The UAE’s Ministry of Education has approved mandatory guidelines for the teaching of Arabic language, Islamic Studies, and Social Studies in private kindergartens across the country, the state news agency WAM reported. The guidelines will come into effect from the 2025-2026 academic year and will apply to all private schools, regardless of curriculum. The initiative seeks to strengthen national values from an early age, fostering a generation that is “proud of its national identity, proficient in its mother tongue, and well-grounded in the values of family, society, and the geography and environment of the…

Late one evening in the early 2000s, Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, rang up Carlo Eleuteri, a Roman dealer of jewellery and antiques, to ask a favour. “He told me, ‘Carlo I know it’s impossible, but tomorrow morning I’m taking my mother to see the pope, do you have anything I can give him as a gift?’” Eleuteri recounts over the phone from Rome. “So we opened the store at midnight and saw what was out of the safe,” he continues. “Luckily, I managed to find him three items and he selected one.” The winning object was a 19th-century…

Image: Supplied In an increasingly complex and competitive wealth management landscape, Wealthbrix Capital Partners is carving a niche with its client-first, portfolio-led model. Founded by seasoned professionals and based in Dubai’s DIFC, the firm is targeting the underserved but rapidly expanding segment of mid-tier millionaires — globally mobile individuals with $5m–$30m in investable assets. Gulf Business speaks with CEO Rajesh Khanna about the inspiration behind Wealthbrix, its strategy to tap into a $55tn global opportunity, and how its “Touch and Tech” approach aims to reshape private wealth advisory in the region and beyond. What was the inspiration behind launching Wealthbrix,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Revolut’s chief executive Nik Storonsky is in line for a multibillion-dollar windfall if he steers the fintech’s valuation to about $150bn, under a long-standing Elon Musk-style pay package. Storonsky, who founded the $45bn start-up in 2015, has an outsized incentive deal that would increase his stake in Revolut by several percentage points if the valuation more than triples from its current level, according to people familiar with the matter. The total amount of shares on offer could be worth as much as 10 per…

Image credit: WAM/Website Amid growing regional tensions following attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has held a series of high-level phone calls with global and regional leaders. The discussions, with counterparts from Oman, France, Italy, and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, focused on preventing further escalation and encouraging diplomatic solutions to safeguard regional stability. In conversations held on June 22, Sheikh Mohamed spoke with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. All parties expressed deep concern about the potential for serious repercussions following…

European healthcare systems face paying more for drugs or losing access to new treatments as a result of Donald Trump’s push for the global medicines industry to cut prices in the US, industry experts have warned.Global drugmakers are in talks with the Trump administration as he pressures them to voluntarily reduce their prices for American patients.Experts say the US president’s plan risks significant consequences for European healthcare systems, as both the Trump administration and pharmaceutical companies are likely to seek price increases in Europe to allow for cheaper costs in the US.Trump’s so-called most favoured nation drugs policy, set out…

A host of Australia’s biggest industrial names are appealing for government aid as high energy prices threaten to force them out of business, in a test for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s new Labor government and its relations with business.Some Australian metals smelters have hit a crisis point over the past year, due to high power bills and volatile commodity prices, with thousands of workers’ jobs at risk. The latest alarm has been sounded by UK-listed miner Glencore, which has operations in Mount Isa, a historic mining town in Queensland. “A combination of unprecedented smelting market conditions, high costs like energy, gas…

Decades ago, long before it was a private-equity powerhouse, the law firm Kirkland & Ellis was a pioneer of a model that overturned a long-standing norm in the legal industry. The Chicago-founded firm started promoting lawyers to partner without granting them the very thing that defined partnership — an ownership stake in the firm. It was partnership in name only.The move gave newly promoted “non-equity” partners, with about six years’ experience, an incentive to start proving they could bring in profitable work for the firm. And to the outside world, it put their hourly billing rates on a higher level during…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Over the second weekend of May, Donald Trump sacked the head of the US Copyright Office. On the previous Friday, the office had released “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 3: Generative AI Training”. For the “tech bros”, who had spent so much on bringing Trump to power, this report was a declaration of war: it cast doubt on the viability of the “fair use” defence, upon which Open AI, Meta and other tech companies rely for the unrestricted right to “scrape” online…

Image credit: Supplied Amazon has exercised its option to acquire a direct equity stake in Valu, the consumer finance arm of EFG Holding, following the company’s listing on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX). The global e-commerce giant will now own approximately 3.95 per cent of Valu’s share capital, executing the transaction through the EGX’s block trade mechanism at a price of EGP 6.041 per share. The stake purchase is set to occur during the first trading session of Valu’s shares, after receiving the necessary regulatory approvals. Read-EFG Hermes’ Karim Meleka sees IPO, infrastructure momentum in MENA amid reforms The agreement stems…