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Dubai has been seeing an influx of wealth managers looking to cash in on the large pools of fortune and growing population of millionaires in the UAE.
Last month, more than a dozen wealth and asset management (WAM) companies set up shop at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), and to date, their total number has already exceeded 370.
These businesses have come all the way from Asia Pacific, Europe, United Kingdom and the United States, while others have originated in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the DIFC said on Tuesday.
“Large pools of wealth embedded in sovereign funds, family offices and via ultra-high-net-worth individuals… continue to draw in the world’s investment managers ranging from traditional to alternative managers,” said Arif Amiri, CEO of DIFC Authority.
The financial hub’s strong performance has also made it a “highly competitive choice” for wealth management businesses looking to tap into Dubai’s status of being the city in the region with the highest concentration of wealth, the DIFC said.
Dubai is home to more than 72,500 individuals with liquid investable wealth of $1 million or more, according to a recent report from Henley & Partners in collaboration with New World Wealth. The city also has 212 centi-millionaires, or those with $100 million or more, and 15 billionaires.
The number of millionaires in Dubai alone is triple the number of any other city in the region, while Middle Eastern state-owned investors manage $4.7 trillion of capital, the DIFC also noted.
The new wealth management firms establishing in the DIFC as of April 2024 include Audere Capital Limited, Banca Del Sempione Ltd, Blue Owl Capital (Dubai) Limited, Capital Asset Management (DIFC) Limited, 24 Capital Management Ltd, El Dorado Capital Limited, GID Investment Advisors LLC, Hayfin, Novia Global Limited, Ominvest Capital (DIFC) Limited, Patient Square Capital (DIFC) Limited, Point72 (DIFC), Taula Capital Management (DIFC) Limited and Theia Investments Limited.
(Writing by Cleofe Maceda; editing by Seban Scaria)