Elevating IR: Recapping MEIRA 2026 and the National Association of Corporate Directors Presentation

So I know you recently had an opportunity to participate in the MIRA conference.

For folks that are participating globally, can you share what MIRA stands for as an acronym? What was the focus of the conference and what were some of the key takeaways that they would want to understand?

Yeah, thanks a lot, Mark.

So Mera is the Middle East Investor Relations Association, and it's our regional IR association covering a number of markets, actually a growing number of markets, because at the conference they announced that a Mera chapter was being set up in Egypt, which is exciting as well.

And the conference took place a couple of weeks ago.

It's the big annual conference and awards ceremony.

First year under a new CEO, Reza, and it was a really great event and really a fascinating opportunity to take the pulse of the region's capital markets during a period of extraordinary change, as you know.

The word of the conference was resilience, which somehow managed to overtake AI.

Although, of course, AI had its fair share of attention as well.

And resilience in our region is being tested.

The conflict has created enormous volatility with winners and losers across markets and sectors.

and considerable uncertainty remains.

And that was what we were talking about, right? But beneath that volatility, we're also seeing some profound structural shifts in the region as a result of some things that were happening prior to the conflict and then maybe catalyzed a little bit by the conflict itself.

So in my home country of the UAE, A lot of the discussion was around the growing emphasis on sovereignty and security and strategic self-reliance with investment opportunities and priorities increasingly focused on securing essential capabilities around food and water and energy and healthcare and, of course, defense.

Whereas there was a huge amount of spending around AI over the last couple of years, there's kind of a retrenchment so um and we're also seeing privatization of strategic national assets um in in the uae so taka which is uh the utin utilities giant uh delisted um and uh the the ports group is being taken private by the by the government or one of the sovereign wealth funds as well so that's that's quite interesting um saudi is is obviously navigating even a more complex environment right now.

the kind of reprioritization of government investments, the Giga projects, for example, NAOM, you may have heard of.

And the Kingdom is continuing to reform its capital markets.

You may have heard there are new proposals focused on IPO quality, transparency, and even mandatory earnings calls.

So an emphasis on on quality of IPOs rather than quantity.

And then, of course, the recent attacks over the last few days on the airports and some critical energy infrastructure have added even more economic and political pressure, further complicating the Kingdom's transformation agenda.

And then, you know, beyond UAE and Saudi, Qatar and Kuwait have been particularly exposed to disruptions in energy exports.

For example, in Qatar, the government cut budgets yesterday, the day before.

I don't think it's officially announced yet, but it's by 30 percent.

So taking... kind of a more cautious approach in the short term and just illustrates the pressure to contain spending and reassess priorities in this period.

So given all of that, you know, what does that mean for IR, right? What were we talking about at Mera? I think a lot of it was around investors, you know, local, regional investors and international investors and what questions are they asking? They're fundamentally different questions from before.