Savvy Games Group’s $6 billion purchase of Moonton Technology, the Shanghai studio behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, was signed in March and remains the defining Middle East deal of the year: a Saudi buyer, a global asset, and a price few others in the region could write. EY’s half-year tally, published Monday, puts announced mergers and acquisitions involving the Middle East and North Africa at $46.7 billion across 390 transactions, down from $58.8 billion and 434 deals in the first half of 2025. Saudi companies signed 74 of those transactions and, alongside the United Arab Emirates, dominated outbound dealmaking. The half’s meaning for the Kingdom sits in the shape of the market rather than its size: fewer signatures, larger sums, and Saudi capital deciding where much of the money goes.
The annual comparison hides the half’s direction. The second quarter produced $25 billion in announced deals, more than double the $12.2 billion of the same quarter last year, and the momentum arrived late: May and June alone accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s deal volume and 79 percent of its value. A year ago the half was front-loaded. This one built as it went, which leaves the market entering the second half with pace rather than losing it. Transactions above $500 million carried close to three quarters of total value, so the recovery was the work of a small number of large decisions rather than a broad return of mid-market activity.
The Profile of a Buyer
Those decisions have an identifiable profile. Savvy, owned by the Public Investment Fund, bought Moonton from ByteDance to add one of the world’s most played mobile titles to a games portfolio the Kingdom has been assembling since 2022. The same logic closed a larger transaction this month, when a PIF-led consortium completed its $55 billion take-private of Electronic Arts. In both cases the buyer is sovereign-linked, the asset is global, and the sector is one Riyadh selected years in advance. EY’s sector table reads accordingly: technology, transportation, financial services and energy led outbound activity, while domestic consolidation ran through real estate, power and utilities.
Brad Watson, EY-Parthenon’s MENA leader, attributed the sustained activity to “strong domestic capital deployment, active sovereign investors and the region’s continued focus on economic diversification.” The description fits the mechanics. Sovereign and sovereign-adjacent buyers run on longer clocks than financial sponsors: they buy capability and market position rather than exit multiples, and a period of regional uncertainty that keeps private equity waiting does not alter a ten-year industrial plan. The United Arab Emirates remained the region’s principal destination for inbound capital, with investor interest concentrated in AI, enterprise software and digital platforms, while Saudi Arabia’s weight showed on the buy side. Between them, the two markets set the tempo for everything else.
The second half will show whether the market broadens beneath them. A deal table where three quarters of value sits above half a billion dollars is a table moved by a handful of investment committees, and the return of mid-sized transactions would say more about regional confidence than another headline acquisition. The calendar offers one obvious stage: the Future Investment Initiative’s tenth edition convenes in Riyadh from 26 October under King Salman’s patronage, and past editions are where Saudi capital has tended to announce what it intends to buy next. The first half established that the region’s deal market moves when Riyadh and Abu Dhabi decide it should. What to watch now is whether anyone follows them in.