Wednesday, Oct 07, 2015

Dubai: For its projects in London, Abu Dhabi Financial Group took a more direct approach with the development side of the business.

Rather than call in third-party contractors, it acquired a majority stake in Northacre, a developer with a nice profile of projects in Central London.

“We did not want to take just an existing building ... we wanted to take a development risk,” said Jassim Al Seddiqi, CEO at ADFG.

“We need a development arm — we cannot just ship engineers from Abu Dhabi to London and set up an office there to work on very large development projects. So, what we did is look around the market for developers and we found a very good company called Northacre and acquired a majority. This was in 2012. Northacre has a track record of 20 years operating in London, particularly in upmarket Central London.”

By Manoj Nair Associate Editor

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