Author: Stuart

OGold signed up its millionth user sometime during its first 12 months of operation, processing $50 million in transactions along the way. Now the Dubai-based fintech has secured investment from Plug and Play Ventures, the Silicon Valley firm that backed PayPal, Dropbox and Honey before they became household names. The timing matters. Digital precious metals platforms are multiplying across the Gulf, each promising fractional ownership and mobile-first access. OGold’s traction—confirmed on 27 April—suggests it’s pulling ahead in a crowded field. What sets the platform apart? Entry starts at AED 1, roughly 27 cents. That price point has turned gold from…

Private market investors in the Middle East have historically paid intermediaries to access deal flow, often waiting weeks for introductions that may never materialise. On 28 April 2026, Dubai-based FinBursa launched a mobile app designed to eliminate that friction entirely. The platform connects investors directly with founders raising capital—no brokers, no success fees, no third-party aggregators skimming data. Startups, private companies, and fund managers list opportunities themselves. Investors browse anonymously. It’s the first dedicated private markets discovery app built specifically for the MENA region. FinBursa’s model hinges on what the company calls “direct source integrity.” Company founders, owners, and authorised…

In 2017, Shaher Moh’d Ali Awartani joined H.E. Yousif Al Otaiba and Mubadala Investment Company to co-found Café Milano Abu Dhabi, bringing the well-known Washington, D.C. restaurant brand to the UAE capital’s Four Seasons Hotel. The venture marked Awartani’s first move into the hospitality sector, adding a consumer-facing business to a portfolio built mainly on infrastructure, real estate, and financial services. Café Milano’s Washington original has long been a meeting point for diplomatic and political figures — a character that transfers naturally to Abu Dhabi’s Four Seasons, where the clientele includes government and institutional figures in much the same way.…

Between 1st March and 15th April, 1,813 luxury property transactions worth more than AED5 million closed in Dubai—a 59.7% jump in volume compared to the same period last year. The total value hit AED25.04 billion. That growth came despite ongoing uncertainty across the wider Middle East region, and it wasn’t confined to one narrow slice of the market. According to data from DXBinteract, three separate price brackets—from AED5 million up to AED100 million—all posted double-digit gains in both transaction counts and total value during the six-week window. The sharpest acceleration occurred in the AED5-10 million segment. Sales value more than…

There are books we read and books that read us. Mia Martin makes this distinction carefully, and she means it in a direct sense. The South Florida author has spent a great deal of time thinking about what happens to a reader inside a powerful story — not the emotional experience, which has been written about at length, but the shift in perception that the best fiction can bring about. The way a novel, once read, changes where your attention goes. “The stories that shaped how I read didn’t teach me about literature,” Martin says. “They taught me how to…

In corporate event planning, the difference between an event that works and one that lands well comes down to preparation, attention to detail, and a clear understanding of what the client’s brand needs. Mary Hoover Drucker set that standard early in her career. She works as a project manager at FIRST Agency in Palm Beach, Florida, and has spent more than a decade producing events for brands and institutions that expect a high level of precision. Her experience spans luxury beauty, financial services, and global experiential marketing. Managing Detail at Scale Large corporate events involve a high number of moving…

Managed IT services are becoming essential for small and medium businesses in Dubai, helping them compete with larger enterprises. These services provide access to advanced technology and support without the need for significant investment, allowing SMEs to focus on growth and productivity.

The financial needs of people change over time. Someone who is just starting out in their career has very different financial needs than someone who is getting close to retirement or who has to take care of someone else. But a lot of workplace financial wellness programs see all of their employees as one big group. When financial wellness at work is like real life, it works best. Supporting employees through all stages of life, starting a career, building a family, changing jobs in the middle of their careers, and planning for retirement, makes employees and employers more engaged, more…

Baucor has added new CNC tools and industrial blades to its product range, available to customers across Europe and in international markets. The company produces precision cutting tools for manufacturers who need tooling that holds its performance across long production runs. The new products cover a wider set of cutting tasks, including applications where heat build-up, tool wear, and chip evacuation have caused problems with standard tooling. Baucor works through each application with the customer, specifying the right carbide grade, coating system, and cutting geometry before the tool goes into production. This reduces the number of tool changes per shift…

Ethnosports 2027 has been introduced as an international organisation built to bring traditional sports into regular global competition. The organisation was announced at the 8th Ethnosport Forum, which took place in Antalya from 3 to 5 April 2026. At the heart of the initiative is a rotating global event in which athletes from different countries compete in traditional sporting disciplines. The event changes host nation with each edition, which gives the competition a wide geographic spread and allows more countries to shape how the event develops over time. The Forum in Antalya provided the first public platform for the initiative.…