Forbes Middle East English Edition – December 2025

Forbes Middle East English Edition – December 2025

Summary

Rizwan Sajan, founder and chairman of Danube Group, marks 33 years with a Shah Rukh Khan-branded tower in Dubai — proof that reputation still matters most when capital cycles turn.

The December 2025 / January 2026 double issue packs 84 pages anchored by the cover story "Building Blocks" (p.42), where Rawan Hassan traces how Sajan grew Danube from a building materials trader into a multi-vertical developer now swinging celebrity-branded real estate. Sobha Group's PNC Menon appears as "The Reluctant Visionary" (p.48), and Nawy's Mahmoud AbdelMaksoud explains "Unlocking Value" (p.54) in Egyptian proptech. The Forbes Investment Guide 2026 opens with crash-proof funds (p.76), a jackpot stock scare story (p.78), and a dissection of the everything bubble (p.82). Leaderboard pieces track the world's youngest billionaires 2025 and the biggest Arab billionaire winners and losers.

Regular sections cover the 30 Under 30 profile of Lili Reinhart, ElevenLabs' AI voice technology in Contrarian, Big Blue's quantum bet, and a full-year economic outlook for MENA. Khuloud Al Omian's Sidelines column frames 2025 as a year of challenges that demand capital discipline. The investment guide targets readers managing portfolios through late-cycle uncertainty with concrete fund picks and valuation warnings.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story / Profiles

p.42 · Building Blocks
Rizwan Sajan turned a small building-materials trading firm into Danube Group, a Dubai conglomerate now developing a Shah Rukh Khan-branded tower. The article walks through three deal inflection points — the 2008 crash, the 2020 pandemic pause, and the current luxury upcycle — that defined his capital allocation. Anyone negotiating developer partnerships in the UAE can study how Sajan sequenced vertical integration.

p.48 · The Reluctant Visionary
PNC Menon, founder of Sobha Group, tells his story in rare detail. He started with a single villa in Oman and now builds master-planned communities across India and the Gulf. The article focuses on the craftsmanship premium he maintained when competitors cut specifications during downturns.

p.54 · Unlocking Value
Mahmoud AbdelMaksoud, CEO of Nawy Unlocked, explains how his platform digitizes Egypt's opaque real-estate transaction chain. He cites a 60 percent reduction in closing time per unit. Useful for fintech operators eyeing mortgage or title-tech entry points in North Africa.

▸ Forbes Investment Guide 2026

p.76 · Crash-Proof Funds
Hank Tucker screens for funds that held up during the 2022 correction and the March 2020 drawdown. He names three multi-asset vehicles with lower maximum drawdown than their category averages. Portfolio managers hedging late-cycle risk get a ready screening framework.

p.78 · Jackpot Stock Scare Story
William Baldwin examines a single-stock blowup where a popular momentum name lost 70 percent in 12 trading sessions. The autopsied trade shows how concentrated option positioning amplified the move. Retail investors should read this before loading single names.

p.82 · Inside the Everything Bubble
Brandon Kochkodin argues that central-bank liquidity has inflated stocks, bonds, real estate, and collectibles simultaneously. He maps price-to-rent, CAPE, and credit-spread percentiles against historical bubbles. Asset allocators can use the percentile table to size their cash reserve.

▸ Leaderboard / Innovation

p.12 · Meet The World's Youngest Billionaires 2025
Forbes identifies the youngest self-made billionaires globally. The list includes a 27-year-old AI founder and a 29-year-old fintech CEO from Southeast Asia. The names and numbers shift quarterly, so this snapshot works for a speaker-booking or deal-sourcing reference.

p.20 · AI In 2026: What To Watch Out For
Muhanad Onsy forecasts AI regulation, inference-cost declines, and the rise of agentic workflows in the Gulf. He predicts inference costs will drop 60 percent year-over-year, opening small-deal economics for AI-native startups in MENA.

▸ Contrarian

p.26 · AI's Inner Voice
ElevenLabs' voice-synthesis technology generates human-quality audio from text clips. The piece tests the platform against professional voice actors in Arabic and English. Media producers evaluating synthetic voice for Arabic-language content get a direct quality comparison.

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Editor's Take

The double-issue format works in the investment guide's favor — readers get a concentrated portfolio review across 12 pages rather than a single stock tip. The Rizwan Sajan cover story delivers the vertical-integration detail that Gulf business readers actually pay for. The weak link is "The Reluctant Visionary": PNC Menon's story is genuinely interesting, but the writing stays at admiration level without a single hard negotiation or failure moment. The 30 Under 30 Lili Reinhart page is a celebrity filler that adds nothing to the issue's investment thesis. Still, the investment guide alone justifies the cover price. This is the issue to buy if you manage MENA exposure and want to stress-test your portfolio assumptions before Q1 2026.

Strengths
• Actionable crash-proof fund screening framework
• Vertical-integration detail in Danube profile
• AI inference-cost forecast with year-over-year numbers

Weaknesses
• PNC Menon piece lacks tension or hard numbers
• Lili Reinhart page is celebrity filler unrelated to MENA business

Verdict: Recommended — The Investment Guide section makes this a keeper for portfolio managers; skip the lifestyle pages.

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