XTB opened its second Dubai office in March 2025, secured a CMA license, renewed its DFSA authorization, and called the Gulf a long-term growth pillar. Within 12 months, Iranian strikes hit UAE soil, both Abu Dhabi and Dubai stock exchanges suspended trading for the first time in their histories, and Brent crude moved 13% in a session. The expansion thesis was either well-constructed or it was premature. What happened in early 2026 was designed, unintentionally, to find out which.
The full interview with Achraf Drid, Branch Director at XTB MENA, is available exclusively on FM Intelligence.
Drid sat down to address that question directly, and his answers say as much about how brokers are absorbing the Gulf shock as they do about XTB specifically. The crisis exposed a structural divide in the Dubai broker community that had been forming quietly since 2023, between firms that kept regulatory fallback options intact and those that surrendered them entirely for the Emirates.
The Week the UAE Went Dark
The UAE Capital Markets Authority halted both exchanges on March 2, with trading resuming on March 4 under new price-limit controls. Drid described the closure as "a well-considered regulatory decision by the UAE CMA to protect market stability," a framing consistent with the regulator's own public language at the time. What he did not describe in detail was what the preceding 72 hours looked like from inside a risk desk.
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Energy and precious metals moved sharply throughout the closure. Gold reached $5,390 per ounce, EU natural gas climbed 38% in a single session, and Hormuz disruption fears sent oil above $82 per barrel.
XTB's CFD operations continued throughout, and Drid said the firm's risk management processes "are designed to handle" that kind of volatility. He did not say whether any negative balance protection events were triggered when oil gapped between Friday's close and Sunday's open, a specific pressure point for brokers with concentrated energy exposure during the same period.
That gap between what equity exchanges experienced and what derivatives desks managed is exactly what the stress test revealed: CFD infrastructure in Dubai is not simply an equity market proxy. It is exposed to entirely different risks, and how firms handled the Hormuz weekend will become a reference point for years.
Multi-License vs. All-In: The Architecture Question
The crisis landed hardest on brokers that had concentrated their regulatory structure entirely in the UAE. Several firms surrendered their European licenses over the past 18 months, drawn by the Gulf's tax environment, faster approvals, and regulator appetite for the retail sector. That decision now carries a cost that was not visible when conditions were stable.
XTB kept its multi-jurisdictional structure intact. Drid said it "has always been central to how we operate" and described it as a source of resilience "when conditions change."
He declined to characterize what competitors lost by going all-in, but the implication is direct: a firm with regulatory presence across multiple frameworks is harder to strand by a single country's government decision. XTB's sale of its FSCA-licensed South African unit, which had no active operations for five years, shows the other side of the same logic. The firm holds licenses where business justifies them and exits where it does not, rather than concentrating exposure in a single jurisdiction.
The MENA client profile, Drid noted, already differs from XTB's European base in ways that make the region commercially distinct: higher average deposits and higher trading frequency than European peers.
Whether those characteristics persist "depends on macro conditions and the continued development of the regulatory and market infrastructure," he said, adding that "participation rates can fluctuate materially during stress periods."
Prop Firms Added Pressure Before the Crisis Hit
The geopolitical shock arrived on top of a separate competitive development that had been building since late 2025. Prop trading firms were already flooding into the Gulf before February 28, drawn by return-on-ad-spend figures that Finance Magnates reported can reach 12 times investment in MENA, against roughly 3 times in the United States. Three firms announced GCC expansion plans from the iFX EXPO Dubai stage in February alone, days before the strikes.
Drid said XTB does not view prop firms as direct competitors, arguing the two models "serve fundamentally different client needs." He acknowledged the broader signal, though: "The growth of prop models can be viewed as a demand signal," he said, while adding that high marketing intensity in the sector "sits outside the protections that apply to regulated brokerages."
The long-term viability of that prop wave is itself under scrutiny, with industry data showing that a significant share of prop firms launched in the past three years have already exited. The crisis did not help them: firms without robust risk infrastructure and without regulated client protections faced the Hormuz volatility with fewer tools than their licensed counterparts.
Where Growth Is Still Possible
On the regional map, Drid was selective. The UAE holds the structural advantages: regulatory clarity under both the DFSA and CMA, established infrastructure, and a client base with the deposit profile to make the economics work. Saudi Arabia he described as "promising" but with a CFD licensing framework that "is still evolving." The firm is monitoring the market, he said, without committing to a timeline.
That selective reading matters because it tells you something about where XTB is and is not prepared to deploy capital. The Gulf is not a single market. It is a collection of regulatory environments at different stages of maturity, and a firm running a two-million-client global target cannot afford to treat them as interchangeable.
XTB added 864,286 clients globally in 2025, a 73% rise from the prior year. Chief Executive Omar Arnaout has described two million new clients annually as "completely realistic" within a few years, comparing the firm's ambition to Amazon's model in e-commerce.
The Bet, Reassessed
Drid said MENA is "a core part of XTB's growth strategy" and has the potential to become "one of the important contributors to our global client acquisition."
"The recent events have reinforced the importance of providing resilient services for our clients, with local leadership and strong regulatory frameworks," he said.
For a firm that committed to the UAE with a second office just 12 months ago, that is precisely what it needed the crisis to confirm. Whether the infrastructure held up as well as the conviction is a question the industry is still answering.
