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Nearly six years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the underlying inflation process in advanced economies has fundamentally shifted, even as headline consumer price inflation has declined substantially from its 2021–2022 peaks.
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Executive Interviews Liquidity CEO Discusses UAE’s Strategic Advantage Despite Regional Turmoil
Liquidity CEO Ron Daniel says UAE operations remain resilient despite war risks, as Israeli firms expand after Abraham Accords normalization
Following the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab countries in 2020, more than 600 Israeli companies have begun operating in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Among them: Liquidity, an AI-driven fintech direct lender that manages a multi-billion-dollar portfolio.
Liquidity’s largest office is now in Abu Dhabi, and its second largest in Tel Aviv. Liquidity CEO Ron Daniel spoke with Global Finance about the latest regional developments amid US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Global Finance: How are you handling the situation?
Ron Daniel: Well, I have many people on the ground in the UAE and many people in Tel Aviv. In total, that’s more than half of my employees who are in a war zone right now. We are dealing with the situation daily. We continue business, but in both locations, a lot of work is done from home. Our first concern is the safety of our people. If someone wants to relocate to their home country, or outside the main cities, we finance that, but most of the team has been quite resilient.
From the UAE, only a few of our employees went back to their country of origin. Our office is open in Abu Dhabi, but most of our staff chose to work from home. We empower our staff to make the decisions that are right for them and their families. The company is functioning as normal; it’s a bit of a stressful time, but we hope it will end soon.
GF: Iran targeted the US-Israeli interests in the region. How is that affecting Liquidity?
Daniel: Yes, just before the war started, Iranian hackers published a direct threat through Telegram to Israeli companies. That meant we had to take additional measures. We contracted a private security company to ensure our office is safe and secure. Our employees are also able to contact them directly and receive advice for any security-related concerns. Thankfully, we’ve never had to use it because the Emirate authorities have been doing a good job in providing clear information and strong security.
GF: How have attacks on data centers in Bahrain and the UAE affected your business?
Daniel: The situation actually doesn’t affect our business, because our business is global, with multi-billion-dollar assets under management and capital deployed in over 45 verticals across 35 countries. Our research and development centers in Abu Dhabi are unaffected. I believe the UAE remains a very good location for data centers because it has affordable energy and ample land and I don’t see the security issue as a long-term threat. The UAE have intercepted most of the incoming drones and missiles. The region is, in my opinion, still a very good destination for investment.
GF: A big selling point for the UAE has always been its status as a safe haven for investment. Is that still true?
Daniel: I still think it’s a safe haven. If you look at the world, there really isn’t a 100% safe haven. Some investors have left the region, and I think it’s a mistake. It shows a lack of understanding of this region’s strategic advantage. At Liquidity, we don’t do politics. We do business, and as a business, the UAE has been and will remain a very significant hub for us. It sits between East and West, and geopolitically, they are OK with everyone, which is good for business. The security situation is a bit challenging, of course, but I believe it is temporary and will resolve itself relatively quickly. I chose to be in the UAE back in 2020 because it was a strategic location for us, and the current situation doesn’t change anything for me.
GF: You have been a strong advocate of normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE since 2020 – how do you see things evolving?
Daniel: I believe the region is heading towards a brighter future in the long run. I think, taking the fundamentals into account, it is a place that’s good for business and good for people. Overall, the situation doesn’t affect my feelings about the normalization process.
On paper, the case is easy to make. The world’s largest proven oil reserves, a sector being reopened to private capital, sanctions that are no longer absolute but conditional, negotiable. There are new laws, new guarantees, new language around arbitration and contract security. For the first time in years, there is something that looks like a framework, perhaps even a government that exercises absolute power over the country while operating under US tutelage.
And yet, the expected cash tsunami remains elusive. This is because the people who would actually have to write the checks are not asking whether the opportunity is real, but whether it will still exist by the time it matters. No amount of lobbying or PR trips can compensate for almost 30 years of arbitrary abuses. After all, Delcy Rodríguez is not the first chavista “president” to court the private sector or offer guarantees.
The problem is not political risk in the abstract. It is that the legal environment investors are being asked to trust has not meaningfully changed. Judges remain largely unchecked, and contracts are still only as strong as the political relationships behind them. The closest thing to a guarantee is not an institution, but proximity: “I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows Delcy.”
That may be enough to get a deal signed. It is not enough to guarantee the kind of long-term, multibillion-dollar investment Delcy needs.
There is also the question of who is actually making those commitments. The current governing arrangement, even with partial recognition from Washington, remains the residue of a deeply contested and improvised system. Its authority may be tolerated, even engaged with, but it is not settled. That matters, because any agreement reached today carries the risk of being revisited tomorrow, not necessarily by a hostile regime, but by future jurists attempting to unwind the ambiguities of the present. In other words, the risk is not just expropriation, but retroactive illegitimacy.
And then there is the country itself. The initial shock of alignment with the United States has created a perception of stabilization, but that perception rests on thin ground. Discontent is not ideological, it is material. Power rationing continues to shape daily life. The bolívar remains structurally weak, its periodic stabilizations undone by recurring cycles of depreciation. For most Venezuelans, the promised improvement in living conditions, expected to follow from these inflows, has yet to materialize in any meaningful way.
What investors are being asked to underwrite, then, is not just a country in transition, but a society that has not yet felt that transition in any tangible sense. That gap matters, because it is in that gap where pressure builds.
And even if one is willing to accept all of that, there is the question few are prepared to answer directly: what happens in two years?
The current opening in Venezuela is not just tied to internal dynamics. It is deeply contingent on a specific political configuration in Washington. A different administration, with different priorities, could decide that Venezuela no longer warrants the same level of attention, resources, or political cover. The approach taken by Donald Trump has been unusually direct. There is no guarantee that what follows will resemble it.
That matters more than investors tend to admit. Because what is being built today is not a self-sustaining system, but a politically supported one.
Under those conditions, the risk is not simply policy reversal. It is systemic drift. The incentives that currently bind the government to external actors can weaken, and with them, the logic that sustains the present arrangement. That does not require a dramatic rupture. Only time.
There is a way to make sense of this, and it requires going back, not forward. In structural terms, Venezuela today resembles 2017. Not in its specifics, but in the nature of the moment. Back then, the country hovered between sustained pressure that could force an opening, and a system learning in real time how to absorb that pressure and consolidate power instead. For a time, it was not clear which way it would go.
Until it became clear that the system had adapted faster than the pressure could escalate. What looked like a moment of transition became, instead, a lesson in survival. That is the part of 2017 that tends to be forgotten, not the protests, but the outcome.
What makes the current moment difficult to read is that it carries a similar ambiguity. There is an opening, but it is partial. There is pressure, but it is uneven. There are signals that point in different directions at once. Engagement with external actors, selective liberalization, a degree of flexibility that did not exist a few years ago. But none of that resolves the underlying question.
Is this the beginning of a transition, or another iteration of adaptation?
For investors, that distinction is more than academic. It determines whether the current opening represents a structural shift, or simply a temporary configuration that will be absorbed, reworked, and eventually reversed. Venezuela has already shown that it can look like it is about to change, while in fact learning how not to. Ultimately, this question is likely to be the one that holds meaningful investment back.
There is, underlying many of these conversations, a quieter assumption that rarely gets stated outright. That under the right conditions, a system like Venezuela’s can be made to work. That a centralized authority, aligned with external actors and supported by technocratic management, can deliver stability without resolving deeper political contradictions. The long-held fantasy of the benevolent strongman.
It is an attractive idea. It is also one that Venezuela has consistently disproven.
The problem is not simply that power is concentrated, but that it is unconstrained. In such a system, predictability does not come from strength, but from rules. When those rules are absent, even proximity to power stops being a reliable safeguard.
The recent arrest of Wilmer Ruperti is a reminder of that. Ruperti was not an outsider testing the limits of the system. He was deeply embedded within it. If anything, he represents the kind of relationship many investors assume can mitigate risk.
And yet, under conditions of unchecked authority, those relationships can be redefined overnight.
In practice, this often produces the opposite of what investors expect, a system where decisions are centralized but not necessarily stable, and where alliances are strong until they are not.
Under these conditions, Venezuela does not favor all investors equally. It favors those who can operate within political constraints, tolerate legal ambiguity, and adjust quickly if those constraints shift. It is less hospitable to actors whose models depend on enforceable contracts, long time horizons, and institutional continuity.
Venezuela is not uninvestable, but it is not becoming normal either.
What is taking shape is something more ambiguous. It is open enough to transact and stable enough to operate in the short term, but uncertain in ways that are harder to measure. The legal framework remains contingent, the political authority behind it is still contested, and the external backing that sustains it is, by definition, temporary.
That does not eliminate opportunity, it defines it. Under those conditions, the question is not whether Venezuela works, but for whom, for how long, and under what assumptions about continuity that may not survive the life of the investment.
In that sense, the risk is not only that things go wrong, but that the terms under which they work are never fully settled.
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Companies whose stock prices have historically shown high correlation to movement in interest rates recently saw an all-time high as odds of rate hikes may seem more plausible for investors than rate cuts.
Although it has lagged in the past
China is better positioned than the U.S. in the Iran war – Yale economist
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A SpaceX IPO promises to be one of the biggest Wall Street events of the year, with several investment banks lining up to help raise tens of billions to fund Musk’s ambitions to establish a base on the Moon, place data centres the size of several football pitches into orbit, and possibly one day send a human to Mars.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the confidential registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission publicly.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Exactly how much SpaceX plans to raise has not been disclosed, but the figure is reportedly as high as $75bn (€65bn). At that level, the offering would easily surpass the $29bn (€25bn) raised by Saudi Aramco in its 2019 IPO.
The offering, which could come as early as June, may value SpaceX at around $1.5 trillion — nearly double its valuation in December, when some minority shareholders sold their stakes, according to research firm PitchBook, prior to an acquisition that increased the company’s size.
Musk currently owns about 42% of SpaceX, according to PitchBook, although that figure will change after the IPO as new shares are issued. In any case, he is likely to surpass the trillion-dollar mark, as he is already close. Forbes estimates Musk’s net worth at roughly $823 billion.
In addition to building reusable rockets to launch astronauts and equipment into orbit, SpaceX owns Starlink, the world’s largest satellite communications company. The company has also recently brought under its umbrella two other Musk businesses: social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and artificial intelligence firm xAI, in a controversial transaction, as both the buyer and seller were controlled by him.
SpaceX has become the leading commercial launch company in its industry, sending payloads into orbit for customers worldwide. However, it has also benefited from significant public funding, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest, given that Musk was a major donor to President Donald Trump’s campaign and remains a strong supporter.
Over the past five years, SpaceX has secured $6bn (€5.2bn) in contracts from NASA, the Department of Defense and other US government agencies, according to USAspending.gov.
Among current SpaceX investors is Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, who owns shares through 1789 Capital. The venture capital firm made him a partner shortly after his father won a second term and has since invested in federal contractors seeking government business.
The White House and Trump have repeatedly denied any conflicts of interest between his role as president and his family’s business dealings.
Millicom prices reopening of $75M senior notes
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Oil prices slide ahead of Trump TV address that may see war curtailed in 2-3 weeks
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Kinross Gold (KGC) has started the process of obtaining the environmental permit to develop its $1.5B Lobo Marte gold project in northern Chile, the government said Wednesday.
The permit application, submitted to Chile’s Environmental Assessment Service, seeks approval for the production of
War, tariff volatility, and shifting capital flows challenge the global currency order—even as markets prove resilient.
When Japan’s largest automaker reported 2025 results last May, it said its earnings were hit by $4.6 billion in foreign-exchange losses due to the US dollar’s decline. This month, Toyota has a new concern: the war in Iran that has spread throughout the Persian Gulf. The company sold 325,000 cars to the region in 2025, but the fighting and the closure of shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz could further decrease earnings.
Even more damaging, the company is forecasting a roughly $9.6 billion drag on earnings in 2026 due to President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs. “The impact of US tariffs,” Toyota CFO Kenta Kon said, “is a significant rise from our initial forecasts.”
The global economy entered 2026 already on shaky ground. The Trump administration’s sweeping tariff policies weakened the dollar and heightened trade fears, while a Supreme Court decision on those tariffs added fresh uncertainty, even as inflation was slowly easing. Then, on February 28, US and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran, oil prices surged, and the dollar bounced higher in a flight to safety.
The Strait of Hormuz, which carries about 20% of global oil and LNG exports, effectively closed after Iranian threats and tanker attacks, sending oil prices from about $70 to more than $110 a barrel within days. Oil-import-dependent economies such as Japan, South Korea and China were especially vulnerable to the war’s aftershocks.
Higher oil prices. Uncertainty about tariffs. The dollar boomerang. Corporate finance executives face a new series of challenges: Higher oil prices, etc. However, despite short-term headwinds for business, global analysts remain relatively optimistic about the long-term economic outlook, even with the war’s sudden shadow over markets.
While energy concerns increased as war clouds gathered over the Persian Gulf, analysts largely believed that the global economy would revert to a pattern similar to the pre-war period: a gradually declining dollar, reduced foreign investment in US assets, and inflation that persistently prevents central banks from lowering interest rates. A key sign of market consensus was that, by mid-March, the forward price of oil for October delivery was $79 per barrel, compared to its temporary $110 spike after the war began. But the uncertainty surrounding the objectives and duration of the attacks on Iran by the US and Israel has kept oil prices bouncing around $100 per barrel.
Aside from the currency issue, several factors have contributed to relatively positive economic forecasts despite the fighting in the Gulf. The Trump administration maintains, despite its forecast having been extended, that the disruption to energy supplies will be relatively short-lived. “You’re seeing a little bit of a fear premium in the marketplace, but the world is not short of oil or natural gas,” said Energy Secretary Chris Wright on CNBC in early March. “Worst case is a few weeks, not months.”
The dollar had a tough year in 2025, dropping about 12% against a basket of other major currencies. Although US administrations usually support a strong dollar, President Donald Trump broke that tradition and said it was “great” that the dollar was falling on global markets, which caused it to tumble even more.
The dollar’s decline triggered a significant shift into gold, which increased in value by 60% in 2025, reaching a record price of $5,110 per ounce. European stocks saw their largest inflows ever in February as investors moved away from the United States.
Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex, said that for much of 2025, foreign investors had been buying US equities while shorting the dollar as a hedge. “Now that US equities are declining, they have to buy back their short-dollar hedge,” Chandler said. “I’m not convinced that what we’re seeing in the dollar is much more than unwinding positions, rather than people flocking to the US as a safe haven.”
Mark Sobel, former head of international finance at the US Treasury, wrote in a March 2025 op-ed for the Financial Times that the dollar’s dominance was slowly eroding. “Like termites eating away at a house’s woodwork, Trump’s dysfunctional policies are eating away at its support and rendering the US currency acutely vulnerable to future shocks,” Sobel said.
A weaker dollar is not just a market story—it is reshaping currency dynamics globally, with China at the center. The Chinese government intervened on February 27 to stop the renminbi’s appreciation against the dollar, which had increased by 7% since last April. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced it would eliminate the 20% reserve requirement on foreign exchange forward contracts and stated it would keep the renminbi’s exchange rate at a “reasonable and balanced level.” The higher value of the renminbi did not hurt Chinese exports—the country recorded a $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025.
China’s government has used the weaker dollar to strengthen the renminbi’s role in trade finance and payments, with officials claiming the currency is now the world’s largest trade-finance currency. Chinese companies have been gradually decreasing dollar transactions. The dollar’s share of cross-border transfers has dropped from 80% in 2010 to about 40% in 2025, mainly due to increased renminbi flows. The renminbi’s share of global trade has grown from 2% in 2021 to over 7%, a notable rise but still not enough to threaten the dollar’s dominant position in world trade.
In Japan, as inflation rises, the Bank of Japan is expected to increase interest rates, according to Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. While the Federal Reserve in the US has kept rates steady through its mid-March meeting. The BOJ’s move to tighten policy after ending its negative interest rate policy is seen as a factor aiding yen appreciation.
Europe has been significantly affected by the rise of the euro, which appreciated nearly 12% against the dollar in 2025. “I have watched the dollar rate with concern for some time,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. “The dollar course is a considerable extra burden for the German export economy.” Dirk Jandura, head of the BGA, Germany’s wholesale and foreign trade association, said the strength of the euro was causing exporters “great concern.” The dollar’s easing, though, has softened some of that impact.
Supporting the Trump administration’s more optimistic oil outlook, the International Energy Agency agreed in early March to release 400 million barrels of oil to address the supply disruption—the largest such action in the organization’s history. The move reinforced officials’ view that any price spike would likely be short-lived, lasting weeks rather than months. The 32 member countries still have about 1.4 billion barrels of emergency reserves that can be tapped if the shortage worsens.
“The rise in crude oil prices to date does not represent a shock of the magnitude seen in earlier episodes,” said J.P. Morgan analysts Bruce Kasman and Nora Szentivanyi. “At [about] $100 a barrel, Brent crude is less than 35% above its two-year trailing average. To deliver a shock similar in size to the Russian invasion, crude oil prices would need to move close to $150 and remain at this elevated level for several months.”
Joe DeLaura, an energy analyst at Rabobank in the Netherlands, urged companies to have a plan in place to make quick decisions involving their energy supplies. “Start assessing your supply chains and your access to capital markets,” DeLuca told a webinar in March. “Are you shoring up relationships? Are you able to have critical redundancy in your supply chains, especially for key inputs like energy? One of the ways to take advantage of this is by looking further out on the curve and take advantage of volatility when it swings in your favor.”
Unlike in 1973, when a Middle East oil embargo caused inflation to soar, the United States now exports both petroleum and liquefied natural gas. Therefore, the war is unlikely to significantly impact the US economy in 2026, as it would require a “very severe scenario” for US economic growth to contract, according to Oxford Economics. “We have a view that the US dollar is going to broadly continue to somewhat weaken,” said Daniel Moseley, associate director for scenarios and macro modeling, at Oxford Economics.
The Iran War most heavily affects Asia. According to the US Energy Information Administration, 84% of crude oil and 83% of LNG travels to the region. I would also say war in Iran. China, India, Japan, and South Korea are the leading destinations for Persian Gulf crude oil, but Thailand and Vietnam also rely heavily on imported energy.
Companies like Toyota have limited options but to cut costs. One strategy is localizing their supply chains. The company announced in February that it plans to invest $10 billion in the US over the next five years to increase production of its most valuable hybrids. It is also reducing production of lower-value models and stated it will implement three price hikes in 2026 to compensate for the “double whammy” of a weaker dollar and US tariffs.
Rajiv Biswas, CEO of Asia-Pacific Economics in Singapore, states that a major concern in Asia is that a prolonged energy shortage could lead to a surge in inflation, prompting central banks to increase interest rates. China’s government, for instance, ordered refiners to halt diesel exports, seemingly worried that supplies could run low during a lengthy conflict.
Biswas stated that the Persian Gulf is also a major shipping route for urea and sulfur used in fertilizer production. This means “the agricultural sectors of many Asian developing countries could also be hit by lack of essential inputs,” as well as the US, right as the Spring planting season begins. Additionally, Brazil, the world’s leading soybean producer, imports most of its urea from Qatar and Iran. India depends on Saudi phosphate exports.
No European industry was more affected by the dollar’s rise than automobile manufacturing. At luxury carmaker BMW, for instance, revenues fell 5.9%, with half of the decline attributable to the strength of the euro, which created a $670 million headwind. Additionally, US tariffs reduced earnings and imports from China and limited sales to Europe.
“If you take all these elements together, the headwind is bigger than the tailwind, which we’re working on,” BMW CFO Walter Mertl said. He added that the company had cut costs by $2.6 billion to boost profitability. “We are working on all cost elements,” Mertl said, including capital expenditures, research and development spending, and sales and general expenses.
To hedge against a weakened dollar that makes their exports more expensive, European companies need to do more than cut costs. These companies need to invest urgently in cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to make them more competitive in the global marketplace, says Marcello Messori, a professor at the Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Milan.
“Europe needs to look at artificial intelligence and how it is compatible with the green transition and try to exploit these specific sectors,” Messori says. “Between the current European specialization in mature technologies and the technological frontier, there are a lot of opportunities that you can exploit between those extremes.”
One company leading this approach is Siemens, once known for low-profit industrial machinery. CEO Roland Busch stated that the company has strong growth prospects because it has focused on adopting new technology. “We are in a good place because we are offering what the world needs,” Busch said. “We are positioned along secular growth drivers: automation, digitalization, electrification, sustainability, and artificial intelligence.”
Messori emphasizes that the European Union must speed up efforts to unify financial markets to create a larger pool of venture capital. He notes that Sweden boasts a thriving startup economy. However, established companies often relocate quickly to the US, where capital markets are more accessible.
While the results of wars rarely match initial predictions, the consensus among analysts is that by year’s end, the Iran war may be seen as an economic distraction rather than a strategic turning point. The forces that defined markets before the conflict—moderating inflation, steady demand, and resilient consumer spending—are expected to keep the global economy on track. The dollar, meanwhile, is likely to remain volatile but broadly weaker over time, as structural pressures and shifting capital flows continue to test its dominance.