The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and UK signed a Free Trade Agreement this year that Anas Sarwar, Minister for UK Trade Policy, said he wanted to “ramp up” at a conference in the City. The UK-GCC Strategic Dialogue 2026 event included GCC Secretary General, Jassem Mohamed Albudaiwi, and leading CEOs, while offering solidarity as Saudi Arabia was attacked by Yemeni Houthis.
“I want to start by saying your friends stand by you in good times and bad,” said Sarwar at the event in London on 20th October at the Guildhall, where the chair of Revolut and CEOs from Mace infrastructure advisors and of Invest Oman, Sharjah and others, gathered to put real business deals on the framework of the free trade agreement (FTA) that was signed in May 2026.
The chief negotiator of the FTA, Raja Al-Marzouqi, was also in attendance, as was Edward Prince from UK Export Finance (UKEF) and Abdulaziz Naser Abdulaziz Almarzouq, Minister of State for Economic Affairs & Investment, Commerce and Industry, Kuwait.
Sarwar sought to reassure GCC member states under attack from Iran and the Houthi regime that their friends will stand by them in “these nervous and challenging times”. A spate of recent attacks have been made against Riyadh airport and other infrastructure across the region.
In his keynote address, GCC Secretary General, Albudaiwi, admitted “challenges to trade, investment and supply chains”, while emphasising this made it all the “more important to meet and advance strategic cooperation” between the tenth largest economy – collectively worth US$2.4trn in GDP per annum – and the UK. Of this figure, US$600bn is in non-oil business and only US$70bn is trade, which is expected to advance now that almost all tariffs have been removed in the FTA between the two.
Further figures shared at the conference included:
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US$643bn worth of investment assets between UK-GCC.
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US$65bn available in reciprocal capital from the UK, which is half of the money corralled from the 17 largest pension funds in the country. This was gathered last year under the auspices of the government and City of London’s Mansion House Accord 2025 for investment purposes.
According to Al-Marzouqi, GCC Chief Negotiator, the FTA will further deepen economic ties between the two, especially as the GCC diversifies away from oil-based economies towards private sector-led growth. “I expect a 22% uptick in growth due to the FTA,” he said, while breaking it down the benefits to each, as follows:
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UK US$4.7bn p.a. benefit
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GCC US$5bn p.a. benefit.
Investment panellists
After the opening addresses, the UK-GCC Strategic Dialogue 2026 event moved on to two subsequent conference panels in London. These were focused on an investment and capital markets finance advancements.
The first featured what the moderator, Ismail Ersahin, CEO of WAIPA, described as “the megastars of investment” from the CEOs of Invest Sharjah and Invest Oman, alongside the head of Kuwait’s KDIPA body, all of whom promoted the opportunities available in their respective countries or emirate.
This was followed by a discussion about the GCC capital markets ecosystem and its potential for synergy across borders and with London. As Abdulmohsin Almukhaizeem, CEO of Kuwait Investment Office, London, said in illustration of how each can help the other: “50% of global Sukuk Islamic bonds are issued in London – 93% of which emanates from the GCC.”
Haitham Al Salmi, CEO of Muscat Stock Exchange and Abdullatif W. Alnusif, Deputy CEO of Markaz, also called for further cooperation. Meanwhile, UKEF’s Prince talked about how his body helped incubate the huge new Six Flags Qiddiya City theme park in Saudi Arabia in recent years.
Trade digitisation
In a further conference session entitled Digital Economies and the Future of Trade, Abdulaziz Al Loughani, CEO of e-commerce gift firm Floward, expressed “solidarity with our friends in Saudi”, while extolling the online shopping and gifting opportunities available in an increasingly digitised world.
Esam Alkheshnam is CEO of KNET, which is Kuwait’s national electronic payment and debit card network. He is keen to see the increasing digitisation of trade, as it positively impacts payment volumes even while ticket sizes shrink.
And fellow panellist Martin Gilbert, Chairman of Revolut, said he wants to provide a digital banking option on the firm’s app-based platform. He commented, “GCC is a key expansion market target, especially as their young population aligns with our technology-based offering.”
