Gold surged past $4,300 an ounce on Friday, headed for its biggest weekly gain since December 2008, as geopolitical and economic uncertainty along with growing US rate cut bets drove investors to the safe-haven metal.

Spot gold rose 0.2 per cent to $4,332.17 per ounce, as of 1102 GMT, after scaling another record high of $4,378.69 earlier. US gold futures for December delivery jumped 1 per cent to $4,345.90.

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Gold is set for a gain of about 8 per cent so far this week. Earlier in the session, gold had temporarily been on track for its biggest gain since September 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers fuelled the global financial crisis.

“With rate-cut expectations, geopolitical risks, and lingering banking concerns all in play, the environment remains highly supportive for gold,” said Alexander Zumpfe, a precious metals trader at Heraeus Metals Germany.

“Short-term consolidation is possible given the overbought conditions.”

On a technical basis, gold’s relative strength index stands at 88, indicating the metal is overbought.

Spot silver fell 0.4 per cent to $54 per ounce, after hitting a record high of $54.47, tracking the rally in gold and a short squeeze in the spot market. The metal is set for a 7.4 per cent weekly gain.

Tumbling bank shares pulled global stocks lower, as signs of credit stress at US regional lenders unnerved investors and drove them into safe-haven assets.

US Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller voiced support for another rate cut. Investors are expecting a 25-basis-point reduction at the Fed’s October 29-30 meeting and another reduction in December.

Gold, a traditional hedge against uncertainty and inflation that thrives in low-rate environments, has surged over 66 per cent this year, driven by geopolitical tensions, rate cut bets, central bank buying, de-dollarisation and robust exchange-traded-fund inflows.

“I believe resilient and huge ETF flows are pulling prices up,” said Michael Haigh, global head of commodities research at Societe Generale.

SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, said its holdings rose to 1,034.62 tonnes on Thursday, its highest level since July 2022.

HSBC raised its 2025 average gold price forecast by $100 to $3,455 per ounce, and projected gold to reach $5,000 an ounce in 2026, supported by elevated risks.

Across the Gulf, a quiet governance revolution is taking shape. Family businesses, sovereign investment entities, and corporates are rapidly adopting advisory board frameworks to bring transparency, accountability, and strategic clarity to decision-making. According to Louise Broekman, founding director of the Advisory Board Centre, the pace of this transformation is significant in the GCC.

“While Europe has a long history of advisory boards, they are now gaining significant traction in the GCC,” Broekman said. “The GCC is a region with enormous ambition for the future, and big projects require big thinking. Advisory boards will be a continual mechanism for supporting the region in reaching that ambition because they harness a global mindset – they allow projects or policy intent to tap into dynamic, diverse thinking and experience.”

With the Gulf attracting global wealth and institutional investment, particularly in government-owned entities and family offices, Broekman said the need for structured external advice has become essential. “Wherever there’s a lot of drive, advisory boards can play an effective supporting function,” she added.

Dubai’s emergence as a governance and innovation hub

Broekman sees Dubai at the epicentre of this regional shift. “Dubai is a global hub in international business, with a high population of educated advisory board professionals and key initiatives (such as the DIFC), which collectively instil confidence in investment in the region and trust in good governance,” she said.

For her, the emirate’s light-touch regulatory environment is an advantage. “You can’t harness innovation if you’re making decisions the way you’ve always done — advisory boards and advisory constructs enable transparency around the decision-making process. The UAE is not overburdened by regulation, and this translates to faster-adapting integrated governance systems, where leaders are demonstrating agile approaches to being informed.”

In family businesses — long reliant on informal networks and trusted advisers — the shift to structured advisory ecosystems is accelerating. “The Global Research Council’s 12-month study on advisory boards in families in business found that one of the key drivers is good stewardship, including succession planning and protecting legacy,” Broekman said.

“As generations change and families become complex, there’s a need for governance frameworks to become more transparent, coupled with an increase in responsibility when it comes to due process around the way decisions are being made,” she explained.

Broekman noted that advisory boards are also helping families manage emerging risks. “The shift toward structured advisory board ecosystems is not just about ‘traditional advice’, it’s also in reaction to a need for organisations to deal with the ‘known unknowns’ including digital, cyber and geopolitical risks, to name a few.”

From insight to trust: why institutional investors rely on advisory boards

The use of advisory boards has become a hallmark of credible corporate governance, particularly when engaging with sovereign funds and private equity. “Advisory boards inform better, more confident decision-making,” Broekman said.

She pointed to a recent example: “The Advisory Board Centre is currently supporting a large, private-equity funded company, and they already have expansive understanding of financial management, but are looking to address broader industry issues and are therefore using advisory boards to tap into private market experience, domain expertise and a fresh lens on value drivers.”

This, she said, allows organisations to “see blind spots, avoid mistakes, fill gaps in skills and experience, identify new avenues and accelerate results through confident decision-making. At the end of the day it’s about accessing trusted external expertise — people they don’t already have sitting around the table.”

Globally, advisory boards are evolving — and the GCC is leading some of that change. “Professionals in the region are fast adopting best practice advisory boards into their portfolio of work,” Broekman said. “It’s clear they are hungry for a modern approach to governance and seek a practical way to apply it.”

She highlighted that the region leads the world in participation in the Certified Chair Executive Program, the Advisory Board Centre’s flagship credential. “It sells out in the region faster than anywhere else in the world,” she said.

“Best practice is underpinned by principles and ethical frameworks around how advice is provided and consumed, so it puts the region in good stead for quality, well-informed decision-making by leaders. This is why we’re bringing the Megatrends Summit to Dubai in November — to really explore the potential of the region.”

Government strategies in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are also shaping the advisory ecosystem. “Because of the scale of the policy ambition in the region, organisations are looking for the finest advisory expertise globally — because they are doing things they have never done before,” Broekman said.

She cited Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 as a prime example. “There’s wide-reaching ambition across water, housing, education policy, to name a few. The university sector is a pivotal moment for the region, whereby universities are mandated to have global thought leadership advisory boards… an indication of the strategic imperative to embed a global mindset for the future.”

Such frameworks, she added, enable countries to shape governance on their own terms. “It means they are able to control decision-making in their own market (which acts both as an innovation lens and a protective mechanism) in an ever-changing global market. It becomes a strength in the way governance is formed in the region.”

Broekman believes the GCC’s open-mindedness is helping it leapfrog mature governance markets. “Modern governance is being challenged in different ways: over- and under-regulation. In mature governance markets, strong overregulation places constraints on governance boards, where risk and compliance flood the agenda and lead to a conservative mindset,” she said.

“By contrast, underregulated environments like Saudi Arabia are in many ways better positioned to build smart, tech-driven governance systems from the ground up.”

The next decade: embedding governance in transformation

Looking ahead, Broekman said the GCC’s governance evolution will continue to parallel its economic diversification. “The GCC has a unique opportunity to adopt technology swiftly and adapt to a modern governance approach faster than other hubs,” she noted. “With the region pursuing bold initiatives where others lag — spanning infrastructure, communities, international trade, and more — the next decade will see advisory boards and governance frameworks evolve hand in hand with the region’s strategic goals.”

For Broekman, the advisory board model is more than a governance trend; it is becoming a key enabler of institutional maturity. In an era defined by transformation and capital influx, the GCC’s embrace of structured advice may well become one of its most enduring competitive advantages.

Egypt raised prices on a wide range of fuel products on Friday, the country’s official gazette said, marking the second increase this year, in line with government policies to reduce subsidies and ease a budget deficit.

The increases of 10.5 per cent to 12.9 per cent on a wide range of petroleum products followed a hike of nearly 15 per cent in April. Egypt’s petroleum ministry said the government would freeze domestic fuel prices for at least a year after Friday’s rise, citing local, regional and global developments.

The ministry added that the petroleum sector would continue operating its refineries at full capacity, paying arrears to partners and offering incentives to boost output and reduce import costs.

Prices for diesel, one of the most commonly used fuels in the country, were raised by 2 Egyptian pounds ($0.0421) to 17.50 pounds per litre from 15.50 pounds.

Egypt remained committed to lowering its energy subsidies and bringing domestic prices in line with actual costs by December as it works to reduce a wide current account deficit, the International Monetary Fund said in March. The government said it would continue to subsidise diesel, even if that required raising prices of other fuels above cost to help cover the subsidy.

The IMF has pushed the government to cut fuel, electricity and food subsidies while expanding social safety nets under an $8bn loan.

In the second quarter, Egypt’s current account deficit stood at $2.2bn, with imports of oil products rising to $500m from $400m a year earlier, according to data from the country’s central bank.

Gasoline prices increased by as much as 12.7 per cent, depending on the grade, with 80 octane gasoline rising to 17.75 pounds per litre, while 92 octane rose to 19.25 pounds and 95 octane increased to 21 pounds.

In a significant regulatory move, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing has announced updated penalties for landlords who illegally subdivide buildings in violation of their original permits. As per the revised regulations, fines ranging between SAR5,000 and SAR25,000 will be imposed on violators. In addition, landlords will be obligated to remove the unauthorised modifications at their own expense.

The updated penalties are part of the ministry’s broader efforts to regulate the urban environment, ensure structural safety, and enforce municipal regulations and licensing requirements, a Saudi Gazette report said.

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In instances where reversing the violation is structurally impossible due to its potential impact on the safety of the building, the violator will be required to pay half the cost of the building. Furthermore, they must correct and remove any resulting damage and provide a safety certificate from a qualified engineering firm accredited by the ministry to confirm the structural integrity of the building.

Negative impact on urban infrastructure

The ministry has emphasised that the unauthorised subdivision of buildings into smaller units adversely affects the urban fabric of cities. This practice leads to a noticeable rise in population density, places additional pressure on basic services, and causes congestion in parking spaces surrounding these buildings.

Violators will be granted a 60-day grace period to correct their status after receiving official notice. All rectification work must align with approved regulatory procedures to ensure building safety is not compromised during the process. The ministry has urged violators to act swiftly to avoid further penalties.

The ministry clarified that the purpose of these updated regulations is to curb irregular development practices, protect residents, and enhance the quality and safety of urban living environments. It has called on landlords and investors to fully comply with the laws before executing any subdivision or modification work in their buildings.

Cyber threats across the GCC are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, driven by the region’s rapid digital transformation and expanding infrastructure. Kaspersky’s latest regional intelligence reveals sharp increases in password stealers and spyware, underscoring the urgent need for cybersecurity models that are proactive, not reactive. At GITEX Global 2025, Emad Haffar, head of technical experts for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa at Kaspersky, outlined how the company’s Cyber Immunity framework and KasperskyOS are designed to help enterprises build resilience from the ground up.

“The attacks we’re seeing today are largely mass market in nature,” Haffar said. “The objective is to target as many potential victims as possible to maximise the threat actors’ benefit. However, we’re also seeing a slight rise in targeted attacks, especially in the ransomware domain, where threat actors are shifting from broad-based campaigns to highly selective extortion models.”

Kaspersky’s recent telemetry shows a 21 per cent rise in password stealers and 34 per cent increase in spyware across the GCC. Haffar said this pattern reflects a widening scope of opportunistic attacks rather than a surge in advanced persistent threats. “The percentage tells you this is not being used as a targeting attack tool or medium, but rather an attempt to reach a wider audience,” he added.

Cyber immunity and the future of secure-by-design systems

One of Kaspersky’s core strategies for countering evolving threats is its Cyber Immunity concept, which underpins the design of KasperskyOS, an operating system built from the ground up for security-critical environments.

“When we introduced KasperskyOS and the whole concept of Cyber Immunity, we created an ecosystem that developers can use to build their own tools and solutions,” Haffar explained. “Right now, we’ve used it to release two or three different solutions, one of which is Kaspersky Thin Client, which we’re introducing in a new version during GITEX.”

While Kaspersky continues to expand its own secure products, Haffar said the company’s long-term goal is to encourage broader industry collaboration. “The door is open to developers from any part of the world to build their own solutions on top of KasperskyOS. This approach will take some time to become a major trend because it requires cooperation not only from the operating system vendor, but also from developers and end users.”

For Haffar, the shift toward cyber immunity represents a necessary reset in how organisations view security. “It’s about time to change the equation,” he said. “We need to build immune systems that can withstand, if not all, at least the vast majority of threats. Even if a tool or application is compromised, it should be completely isolated without affecting the entire running environment.”

Securing operational technology without downtime

In operational technology (OT) and industrial sectors, security adoption has historically lagged due to concerns over business continuity. “In any OT business, continuity is second to none,” Haffar said. “You cannot afford even one second of downtime in power generation or other critical infrastructure facilities.”

This challenge guided how Kaspersky designed its Industrial Security solutions. “Everything we offer can operate 100 per cent in passive mode,” he explained. “That means we can be in the environment just listening passively—mapping network activity, identifying communication flows, and providing a full picture of how engineering workstations and PLCs interact—without intervening in any industrial processes.”

Once operators are ready, the system can evolve from passive monitoring to controlled response. “When they feel comfortable, we can start introducing controls. The tool can block certain processes, provide analysis, and assist in decision-making,” Haffar said. “Flexibility is key. Operators can use it as ears in the environment first, and then decide when to act.”

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Identifying the GCC’s most targeted sectors

Kaspersky’s regional threat intelligence data, drawn from its Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), provides a detailed picture of who is being targeted and how. “Government entities, critical infrastructure, military, finance, and telcos are the most targeted entities in the region,” said Haffar.

He attributes this to both the region’s rapid economic growth and its geopolitical relevance. “Threat actors want to capitalise on the region’s economic expansion and technological adoption,” he said. “Government services, critical infrastructure, and national institutions have all seen huge development, which creates opportunities for threat actors.”

Haffar also emphasised the importance of localised threat intelligence in guiding Kaspersky’s product strategy. “Because we have a solid footprint in the GCC and wider META region, we can translate that visibility into actionable threat intelligence,” he said. “We don’t just provide random intel; we customise it for the region by addressing the threat actors and risks specific to the Middle East.”

This intelligence is delivered in both machine-readable and human-readable formats, allowing enterprises to integrate it directly into their own SOC systems or use it for research and incident response. “It’s a complete cycle,” Haffar added. “The more visibility we have, the better we can generate relevant intelligence that feeds back into both our solutions and those of our clients.”

Data sovereignty and trusted partnerships

Regional partnerships and regulatory alignment form another key pillar of Kaspersky’s strategy. “We have a very close relationships with regulators across the region,” said Haffar. “We’ve signed MOUs with cybersecurity councils in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and maintain active dialogue with regulators across the region.”

He noted that data sovereignty is one of the defining requirements of cybersecurity solutions in the Gulf. “Unlike Europe or the US, where cloud-first models dominate, regional clients want full control over their data,” he explained. “Anything we provide can operate 100 per cent on-premises, without any link to external sources, while maintaining the same efficiency as an online system.”

By designing its systems with sovereignty and interoperability in mind, Kaspersky aims to bridge the trust gap that often accompanies new technology adoption. “Our goal is to ensure clients not only comply with regulations but also maintain full operational autonomy,” said Haffar.

Kaspersky’s message to regional enterprises is clear: cybersecurity can no longer be an afterthought. Through its focus on cyber immunity, localised threat intelligence, and regulatory collaboration, the company is helping redefine what it means to be secure in an era of digital dependence. For the Middle East, where the stakes of downtime or data loss are higher than ever, building immunity—not just defence—may define the next decade of cybersecurity innovation.