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Gemini has secured registration with AUSTRAC and formally established its Australian arm, positioning itself as a regulated digital currency provider in the country. With the move, Australians can now trade with Australian dollars through local payment rails and the firm has named a dedicated country head to lead its strategy.

The new entity, Gemini Intergalactic Australia Pty Ltd, is now recognised by AUSTRAC as a digital currency provider, enabling full operations in compliance with Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing laws. Local deposit and withdrawal options via PayID and Australia’s New Payments Platform will be enabled, reducing reliance on cross-border transfers.

Saad Ahmed, Gemini’s head of APAC, said the expansion aligns with robust demand in Australia’s crypto market, which the company estimates at roughly 22–25 per cent adoption. He emphasised that the decision to push into Australia preceded the government’s latest regulatory proposals. The firm plans to apply for an Australian Financial Services License to roll out advanced services such as staking and lending, but these will not be available at launch.

To lead its local presence, Gemini has appointed James Logan as Head of Australia. Logan was formerly in leadership roles at Luno and Bitget in Australia, thus bringing regional experience in crypto operations and regulatory compliance. His responsibilities include building partnerships, scaling operations, and navigating evolving policy frameworks.

Gemini’s entry comes amid intensifying regulatory focus in Australia. The government recently released draft legislation that would require crypto exchanges to hold an AFSL under the Corporations Act, thus applying the same regulatory rigour to digital assets as to traditional finance firms. Some industry observers view the move as a consolidation trigger—smaller platforms may struggle to absorb compliance costs.

Beyond regulation, banking integration remains a competitive differentiator. Australian customers have long faced friction when depositing and withdrawing via crypto platforms due to banks restricting or flagging such transactions. Gemini’s local setup aims to mitigate such barriers by partnering with Australian payment systems and financial institutions.

In the competitive landscape, Gemini will go head to head with established players such as Independent Reserve, CoinSpot, Binance Australia and OKX. While some already operate under established local compliance frameworks, Gemini emphasises institutional-grade infrastructure, regulatory integrity and global liquidity as its advantages.

Analysts view the timing of Gemini’s move as strategic. The firm’s recent listing on Nasdaq, in which it raised USD 425 million, has strengthened its capital base and credibility. Establishing operations in Australia now allows it to lock in market share under current rules, ahead of any stricter licensing regime.

Australia’s crypto adoption has surged in recent years. Surveys and industry reports suggest that by 2025 nearly one in four Australians hold digital assets—a rate comparable to the U. S. This growth, along with rising institutional interest, makes the market an increasingly attractive target for global exchanges.

Gemini has had a presence in Australia since 2019, serving local users via its global platform but with limited features and higher costs. Under the new structure, native AUD deposits, enhanced trading pairs, and faster settlement are expected to improve user experience and price competitiveness.

While Gemini’s initial rollout will omit certain features like crypto-backed credit or staking, the company says it is pacing its product expansion in tandem with regulatory clarity. It is adopting a “wait-and-watch” posture with respect to the government’s consultation process, but remains confident that its operations will comply.

The Australian push is one element in Gemini’s broader global strategy. It has also moved ahead in Europe under MiCA and is exploring tokenised stock trading in key markets. The firm now claims to serve customers in over 60 jurisdictions and has processed hundreds of billions of dollars in cumulative trading volume.

The RNTrust Group is set to roll out its digital-trust architecture under the banner “Infinite Trust” at GITEX Global 2025 in Dubai. The offering is built around three flagship technology pillars—BOAT orchestration, cyber-intelligence, and stratum-level time synchronisation—aimed at solving friction points faced by large enterprises operating across complex, digital ecosystems.

At the core of the strategy is Coopera BOAT, RNTrust’s enterprise orchestration and automation engine, which integrates bots, APIs, microservices, content, case-management, and AI agents under a unified platform. The company positions BOAT as a successor to legacy BPM and ECM systems, enabling long-running and cross-domain workflows across IT and business domains. Integrated AI and generative flows help with decision intelligence and unstructured data extraction. RNTrust claims the platform aligns with market forecasts that predict the orchestration market will expand markedly in the coming years.

Complementing BOAT is ThreatLeap, a cyber threat intelligence and compliance platform operating 24/7 to scan external attack surfaces, detect leaks, misconfigurations, phishing domains and advanced threats, and flag compliance gaps across regulations such as NIS2, DORA, GDPR and PCI-DSS. The system is portrayed as proactive, intended to reduce risk exposure rather than simply respond to incidents.

Lastly, the group is spotlighting StratumOne, a time-synchronisation solution leveraging GNSS signals, atomic clocks and precision engineering to deliver nanosecond-level accuracy. Target sectors include finance, telecoms, 5G networks and critical infrastructure where time precision is essential.

RNTrust leadership will host product demos and discussions at the Novotel World Trade Centre during the expo, targeting CIOs, CISOs, system integrators and partner firms. The platform claims deployments and partnerships across the GCC, Europe and the U. S., drawing on R&D centres in Southeast Europe, Italy and the UAE.

The company frames “Infinite Trust” as a unification strategy—bringing orchestration, security and timing coherence into a cohesive architecture that can scale across diverse enterprise landscapes. This positioning aims to appeal to large organisations wrestling with digital transformation, hybrid workloads, compliance burdens and the growing attack surface of distributed systems.

Market watchers note that digital trust is becoming a key battleground for software and cybersecurity vendors. The integration of orchestration and security is a direction echoed by peers embedding zero-trust and AI decision engines into automation platforms. The time-sync component adds a niche yet strategic dimension, tapping into sectors where precision timing is a regulatory and technical requirement.

Genians and RASInfotech are set to showcase a unified cybersecurity stack centred on Network Access Control, Endpoint Detection & Response and Universal Zero Trust Network Access at GITEX 2025, positioning their approach as a path to measurable security outcomes in the Middle East and Africa.

At the heart of their presentation is the proposition that NAC is not just an access control tool but a foundational anchor for Zero Trust adoption. With RASInfotech acting as their MEA distributor, Genians claims to deliver seamless transitions from on-premises NAC systems to cloud-managed deployment models with no operational downtime, while extending enforcement to both IT and OT environments.

Genians’ EDR offering, emphasised as on-premises to satisfy data sovereignty demands, is promoted as a complement to NAC—working together to fortify visibility, threat response, and enforcement. Executives point to deployments in sectors such as government, healthcare and retail across the MEA region to validate their approach.

Cybersecurity demand in the region is rising sharply. The Middle East cyber market is projected to expand significantly in coming years. Observers note that adversaries are increasingly adopting AI-driven techniques such as deepfake phishing, polymorphic malware and supply chain intrusions, making traditional perimeter defences inadequate. At GITEX, solutions built on identity, device context and continuous monitoring are gaining traction.

To that end, Genians intends to demonstrate how NAC and EDR modules integrate into a unified Zero Trust architecture—eschewing fragmented SASE modules in favour of a cohesive platform. Their roadmap emphasises enforcement from the network layer outwards, rather than additive overlays. The company also claims to have identified threat campaigns—such as a North Korean cyber espionage operation leveraging ChatGPT—that its platform is capable of detecting and analysing, reinforcing its real-world efficacy.

Regional support is central to Genians’ strategy. RASInfotech maintains a technical support centre in India to offer 24/7 engineering backup across time zones, while a regional Korean government–backed cybersecurity initiative taps Genians and partner vendors to strengthen regional infrastructure resilience. The collaboration is framed around “regional sovereignty” in data control and local compliance alignment.

Within the channel ecosystem, the role of integrators and resellers is evolving. Traditional resellers are being pushed to become resilience architects—advisors that guide enterprises from legacy infrastructure to Zero Trust, rather than merely deploying point products. Genians and RASInfotech are reportedly investing in partner training, labs, and enablement to support that shift.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced that its six publicly traded subsidiaries will distribute AED 158 billion in dividends through to 2030, nearly doubling the AED 86 billion cumulative payout since the first listing in 2017.

The announcement came during ADNOC’s inaugural Investor Majlis in Abu Dhabi, where the group underscored its commitment to shareholder returns and transparent governance. The dividend programme is subject to customary approvals and will provide long-term visibility to investors across its diversified portfolio of listed entities.

ADNOC’s six listed companies currently account for more than AED 550 billion in market capitalisation on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and represent nearly 40 percent of the annual dividends distributed on the market. Under the new plan, three additional entities—ADNOC Distribution, ADNOC Gas, and ADNOC Logistics & Services—will join ADNOC Drilling in issuing quarterly dividends.

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, ADNOC’s Managing Director and CEO, also serving as UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, described the dividend target as a “landmark step” adding clarity to the group’s capital return path. He stated the move would “enhance value” for citizens, residents, and partners, and reaffirmed ADNOC’s focus on cost discipline, efficiency and growth.

Each listed unit announced specific dividend floors and policy reforms. ADNOC Drilling set a cumulative floor of AED 25 billion by 2030, representing a 26 percent minimum return over the period. ADNOC Gas pledged a target of AED 90 billion, with dividends moving to a quarterly basis from 2025 onward. ADNOC Logistics & Services raised its guidance to AED 8.1 billion for 2025–2030 and intends to adopt quarterly distributions from the third quarter of 2025.

Other units will also tighten their dividend structures. ADNOC Distribution expanded its dividend policy through 2030 and targets cumulative returns exceeding 30 percent over the 2025–2030 period. Borouge affirmed a dividend floor for 2025 and envisaged a payout ratio of 90 percent of net profit in future years. Fertiglobe flagged interim dividend payments and share buybacks for 2025 to support yield.

Beyond dividends, ADNOC disclosed key developments across its upstream, LNG and petrochemical segments. ADNOC Gas has secured a long-term feedstock agreement worth AED 147 billion with its Ruwais LNG facility. Over 80 percent of project capacity is under contract. The group also reported that the merger of its petrochemical assets with OMV—that is, combining Borouge and Borealis into Borouge Group International —remains on course for completion in Q1 2026. Financing for the transaction, valued at AED 56.6 billion, is in place and synergies of at least AED 1.8 billion annually have been identified.

Earlier this year, ADNOC transferred its stakes in several listed subsidiaries—namely Distribution, Drilling, Gas and Logistics & Services—to its wholly owned investment arm, XRG, via off-market moves. The transfers, completed or pending regulatory clearance, were explicitly stated not to affect operations, leadership or dividend policies. Control remains with ADNOC via its 100 percent ownership of XRG.

Analysts view the dividend pledge as a strategic signal in a more competitive capital-raising environment. It strengthens the case for long-term investor confidence, especially amid global volatility in energy markets and shifting sector dynamics. Some warn, however, that such large commitments require careful balance with capital expenditure demands, especially for exploration, decarbonisation and upstream expansion to meet rising regional energy and gas demand.

By Nitya Chakraborty Just forty eight hours within the external affairs minister Dr. S Jaishankar’s candid statement that Trump has to respect red lines drawn by India at trade talks, Indian officials joining China, Russia, Taliban government of Afghanistan and even Pakistan denouncing President Trump’s bid to take over Bagram air base in Afghanistan, is […]

The article India’s Opposition To Trump Bid To Take Over Bagram Airbase Has Special Significance appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

The World Bank has trimmed its projection for South Asia’s economic expansion in 2026, citing elevated U. S. tariffs on Indian exports as a key drag. The region’s growth is now forecast at 5.8 percent, down from 6.6 percent this year.

The updated “South Asia Development Update” flags the U. S. trade measures as a major headwind, especially given India’s size and its integration into regional supply chains. The report sets India’s growth for fiscal year 2025–26 at 6.5 percent, up from its earlier estimate of 6.3 percent, but warns of a drop to 6.3 percent in 2026–27 as tariff pressures intensify.

The U. S. has imposed tariffs of up to 50 percent on a broad swath of Indian goods—impacting sectors such as textiles, gems and jewellery and seafood—affecting nearly $50 billion in exports. These are among the highest duties levied on any U. S. trading partner. The World Bank notes that these tariffs will particularly bite in 2026 as initial buffers from public spending fade.

Franziska Ohnsorge, chief economist for South Asia at the World Bank, asserted that the toll from trade restrictions reflects “a reversal of the gains” India had made in integrating into global value chains. She urged structural adjustments: lowering tariffs and signing free trade agreements to support export competitiveness.

Beyond India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka show varying trajectories. The Bank upgrades forecasts for Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, citing easing fiscal strain and improving external balances. Meanwhile, Nepal and the Maldives bear the brunt of tighter global conditions, with their outlooks revised downward.

Policy responses in India are already in motion. The government launched sweeping tax cuts spanning consumer goods to automobiles, one of the largest fiscal interventions in recent years. Concurrently, infrastructure spending is being boosted to drive domestic demand and counterbalance export headwinds. The Reserve Bank of India held its repo rate at 5.50 percent in October, citing subdued inflation and leaving open room for a future cut.

Indian officials remain confident. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called the economy “resilient,” expressing faith it could absorb external shocks while targeting an ambitious 8 percent growth. The Chief Economic Adviser affirmed earlier forecasts of 6.3–6.8 percent GDP growth, downplaying long-term damage from trade friction.

International institutions have also flagged downside risks. The Asian Development Bank cut India’s FY 26 forecast to 6.5 percent from 6.7 percent, pointing to duty pressures and policy uncertainty. The IMF earlier trimmed India’s 2025-26 prediction to 6.2 percent, citing heightened global trade tensions.

The World Bank’s report emphasises that over the medium term, trade liberalisation combined with labour flexibility and investment in digital infrastructure could help South Asia reclaim momentum. Within the document, a scenario of tariff cuts and deeper trade integration is modelled to yield significant gains in productivity, employment, and output per capita.

Still, the path ahead is fraught. The report cautions that the region is vulnerable to a global slowdown, geopolitical shocks and labor market disruptions from artificial intelligence. In particular, it warns that weaker export growth from India will spill over across the region via trade, financial and migrant-worker channels.

By Sushil Kutty Rare minerals included lots of ores, this was something we were taught in school and we learned about stone age, copper age and iron age, the last of which remains to this day the most basic of minerals, out of which was born steel and the term steely strength, like in ‘Superman […]

The article Pakistan Is The Dearest To Trump In Asia As Islamabad Exports Rare Earth Minerals appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

More than 70 percent of H-1B visa recipients are citizens of India, underscoring the country’s dominant role in the U. S. skilled-worker pipeline. According to U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, in fiscal year 2024, India accounted for 71 percent of approved H-1B petitions. China followed distantly with 11.7 percent.

The H-1B visa programme allows U. S. companies to employ foreign nationals in “specialty occupations,” typically requiring at least a bachelor’s degree, over periods of up to six years. The annual statutory cap is 65,000 new visas plus 20,000 reserved for holders of advanced U. S. degrees.

The Indian concentration in the H-1B cohort has persisted over decades, yet its scale is striking under renewed policy pressure. A recent presidential proclamation raised the cost for new H-1B petitions to $100,000—a move critics say targets exactly the cohort with the greatest concentration in India.

Industry analysts warn the fee hike could shrink participation in the programme or push firms to avoid new petitions, particularly when the number of new visas is strictly limited. The policy excludes existing visa holders and those whose petitions were filed before the proclamation.

The Indian government has cautioned that such steep increases in visa costs may have “humanitarian consequences” for workers and families. It has also expressed concern about disruption to bilateral skilled labour mobility and urged U. S. authorities to reconsider the policy in light of its broader economic implications.

Indian IT firms such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have historically been among the top sponsors of H-1B workers. But recent years have seen U. S. tech firms like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta increasingly dominate the list of petitioners, reflecting evolving dynamics in who hires global talent.

Critics of the visa fee hike argue that Congress—not the executive branch—retains authority to impose fees and that the move could contravene statutory limits on visa allocation. A coalition of industry groups, unions and educational organisations has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the policy’s legality.

Supporters of the change frame it as a measure to prioritise domestic wage levels and reduce abuse of the H-1B system by contractors hiring at low rates. They contend the increased barrier will press firms to invest more in U. S.-based workforce development, though critics counter that American companies rely heavily on foreign technical talent to stay globally competitive.

Goldman Sachs has launched a new office in Kuwait, asserting a significant push to enhance its reach across the Middle East and deepen its ties with Gulf-region clients under fresh leadership.

The New York-based investment bank said its role over five decades in Kuwait spans investment banking, capital markets and asset management. As part of its latest expansion, Goldman has tapped Mohammad Almatrouk as managing director of the Kuwait office, pending regulatory green light, while Fahad Alebrahim has been appointed managing director of the firm’s private wealth business in Kuwait.

David Solomon, Goldman Sachs’s Chairman and Chief Executive, framed the move as a commitment to “grow our capabilities across the Middle East and better serve our clients,” emphasising Kuwait’s economic vision as a catalyst for the firm’s expansion.

Goldman Sachs points to a long-standing capacity-building partnership in Kuwait that includes a professional training scheme designed to nurture talent at institutions such as the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Public Institution for Social Security and the Kuwait Fund. That programme, the bank says, will continue to play a central role in integrating local human capital into its global operations.

The choice of Kuwait underscores a growing focus on the Gulf’s institutional capital. Kuwait, host to one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, has attracted global financial firms looking to align with its diversification and investment ambitions. Goldman Sachs’s decision follows earlier regional expansions, such as establishing a presence in Abu Dhabi and securing a banking licence in Saudi Arabia.

Kuwait’s Director General of the Direct Investment Promotion Authority, Sheikh Dr. Meshaal Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, praised the move as aligned with Kuwait’s economic diversification and global integration goals. He stressed that opening the office supports national priorities including talent development and sustainable growth.

Regional analysts view Goldman’s Kuwait office as part of a broader recalibration by global banks to embed themselves closer to Gulf capital sources. Over the past two years, deal activity in sovereign and quasi-sovereign asset structures has exploded, prompting major firms including Lazard, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank to expand in the Gulf with new leadership hires.

Inside Goldman Sachs, the timeline coincides with a leadership transition: the firm’s co-head for the Middle East and North Africa, Fadi Abuali, is slated to retire after nearly 28 years of service. His departure is expected to reshape the firm’s regional hierarchy just as Kuwait becomes a new hub.

Some observers caution the move carries execution challenges. Regulatory approvals in Kuwait must be secured, and Goldman must integrate the new office into its broader Gulf operations without duplicating functions. Success will depend on maintaining local relationships while delivering global platform advantages.

Cisco will unveil its latest innovations at GITEX GLOBAL 2025 in Dubai, aiming to equip enterprises across the Middle East and broader region with infrastructure built specifically for the AI era. The showcase focuses on AI-ready data centres, resilient network architectures, and strengthened security frameworks designed to support advanced workloads in data-intensive environments.

By joining the AI Infrastructure Partnership alongside BlackRock, Microsoft, NVIDIA, xAI and others, Cisco has committed to accelerating capital flows into datacentre and infrastructure projects. The partnership expects to unlock $30 billion in initial funding, scaling up to $100 billion including debt financing. Cisco brings its network, security and systems expertise to support the platform’s mission of secure, at-scale AI infrastructure.

At the heart of Cisco’s push is its new Cisco Data Fabric, launched in integration with Splunk, which provides federated data access across systems such as Amazon S3, Iceberg, Delta Lake and Snowflake, routing workloads intelligently to the best analytics or storage engine. This architecture is intended to reduce data movement, shorten analysis latency, and enable enterprises to transform machine data into AI-ready intelligence.

To support retrieval-augmented generation and agentic AI deployments, Cisco introduced the Secure AI Factory solution with NVIDIA and VAST Data. This validated architecture accelerates data extraction and retrieval at scale while enforcing security guardrails for every token processed. AI PODs built under this architecture offer pre-validated, high-performance building blocks for enterprise AI.

Networking and security are being redefined for the AI workload environment. At Cisco Live 2025, the company launched a next-generation network architecture for campus, branch and industrial environments, delivering unified management and devices purpose-built to support AI traffic patterns. It also introduced Hybrid Mesh Firewall and Universal Zero Trust Network Access to embed security into network fabric across hybrid and distributed environments. These features aim to simplify policy enforcement, improve visibility, and reduce complexity in securing both human users and AI agents.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins disclosed that fiscal year 2025 saw record AI infrastructure orders. In its final quarter, the company secured over $800 million from webscale clients, bringing total AI-focused orders to more than $2 billion—more than double its initial target. He described the pipeline as steadily growing into “hundreds of millions” as enterprises demand scalable, secure solutions.

In the Middle East, Cisco plans to demonstrate the regional relevance of its technologies under the theme “Make AI Work for You.” According to Cisco’s new AI Readiness Index, a vast majority of organisations in the UAE expect to expand their data centre capacity for AI within five years. The company will also present its work with Splunk on security and observability platforms at the event.

Cisco’s collaboration with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN is intended to build out an open, scalable AI infrastructure ecosystem aligned with Vision 2030. The multi-year programme includes deployment of cloud-based AI infrastructure, joint research initiatives, and efforts to grow local talent and innovation. The partnership underscores Saudi ambitions to position itself as a global AI hub.

Cisco sees accelerating demand for network modernisation. Its internal research reports that 97 percent of IT leaders view modernised networks as critical to deploying AI, cloud and IoT workloads, and 98 percent rate secure networking as essential for growth. However, the same study notes that only 40 percent of organisations have begun deploying advanced segmentation or intelligent control, illustrating an execution gap.

To strengthen its AI strategy, Cisco also expanded its presence in Indonesia by signing a Letter of Intent with BRIN to develop AI and cybersecurity capabilities via its Country Digital Acceleration programme. The plan includes building an AI Centre of Excellence and delivering training in AI, security and networking to 500,000 Indonesians by 2030.

Splunk’s observability portfolio itself is being reworked to embrace agentic AI, deploying AI agents to automate tasks such as root cause detection, alert correlation and issue resolution. This is intended to lighten the operational burden on IT and engineering teams while driving real-time insight.