Public and private transactions in the GCC: Testing pricing transparency for local issuers
3 min read
A market shift is underway in how international issuers, including those in the wider GCC, bring bonds and sukuk to market – and it is affecting how public markets can price new transactions.
Backdrop: Industry concentration vs Geopolitical considerations
Industry concentration of Capital Flows:
In the last 24 months there appears to be a global reallocation of investor demand towards a narrower set of industry sectors. As public sources report, in 2025, five major technology "hyperscalers" issued over USD 100 billion of bonds. That eclipses averages of around USD 20 billion in each of 2023 and 2024. Issuance levels in AI and AI-adjacent industries show no signs of slowing down during 2026 either.
These volumes are due to huge funding demands and investor appetite – effects of which are felt elsewhere in the markets, including the GCC, where local issuers compete over a tighter pool of liquidity.
Geopolitical Instability:
The second trend is more specific to the GCC, where the ongoing geopolitical instability is affecting local issuers' funding strategies – commentators recently suggested that GCC issuers may look more favourably at local currency markets or at single investor "true private placements" – such transactions may offer rapidly available liquidity, good pricing, and faster execution.
The flip side is, even a temporary move away by local issuers from international public syndicated transactions may challenge the clarity of pricing for regional credit.
Two Trends Compound:
The concentration of investors' attention around a smaller group of accounts could be felt even stronger by those issuers most exposed to sectoral or regional risks, including some GCC issuers.
Faced with competing supply and geopolitical risk premiums, such issuers may feel encouraged to opt out of the public pricing process altogether.
Even if the issuance levels remain strong (and many market participants confirm that is indeed the case in 2026), a strong headline issuance volume in the private markets may not on its own guarantee sufficient public issuance pricing data, if an increasing share of the new issuance market activity is privately negotiated and not available to the wider market.
Price transparency in public markets depends on sufficient number of comparable, recently priced trades and open secondary trading, so that market participants can observe where credits of similar tenor, rating and currency actually price.
When part of a market opts out of public pricing in favour of private execution, the pool of visible reference points shrinks.
This is when the private placement market that is so attractive for some, may end up a challenge for others – especially for new or infrequent issuers.
Regular issuers with well-known credit fundamentals and an established pool of investor will remain confident where their pricing should sit – but a debut borrower pricing their first bond or sukuk needs recent, comparable market data to anchor their spread discussions with potential investors. When sector concentration pulls investor attention elsewhere, and when geopolitical conditions push a share of comparable regional transactions into private channels, reference points available to such new issuers thin out precisely when they are needed most.
The result is a regional market that may become harder to read – as always, that is when expert advice from financial advisors, arrangers and legal counsel will be crucial in determining the right comparables and building a thoughtful pricing strategy very early on in the transaction timeline.
This article was originally published in LIR Qatar, Edition 4. For further information, please visit: https://thelegalindustry.com/qatar/
Any views expressed in this publication are strictly those of the authors and should not be attributed in any way to White & Case LLP.
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