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The Abu Dhabi Investment Company, which has been on something of a hiring spree this year, has rolled out four new equities funds in a bid to attract international investors and reinvented itself as Invest AD. It also looks set to continue recruiting.
The new funds are an attempt to lure institutional investors to the MENA region, which Invest AD chairman, Khalifa Al Kindi describes as a “phenomenal investment opportunity”.
So far this year, the firm has hired Samir Assaad Samaan from NBK Capital as head of private equity, Anders Ljungqvist to lead the new proprietary investment arm, Thierry Gimonnet from Goldman Sachs as head of finance, Alex Carré de Malberg from Rothschild as head of its new M&A advisory business and says it is also ramping up graduate recruitment.
Chief executive Nazem Fawwaz Al Kudsi, said in March: “As we expand, I’m happy we can attract high quality staff, both locally and internationally.”
Headhunters say the firm is making good on its promises. One executive search firm working with Invest AD says: “They’ve been expanding aggressively all year, at both a senior level and lower down the ranks. We’re still receiving mandates for them for key hires in the near future.”
Similarly, another headhunter tells us they continue to see a steady flow of roles from Invest AD’s much larger neighbour, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. However, the only high-profile hire this year is Bill Schwab as head of real estate from JPMorgan.
As well as the front office staff, recruiters tell us that SWFs are also hiring for roles around internal regulation and risk management.
While recent recruits show that bankers from top firms are now keen to move to SWFs, there’s still a lot of emphasis placed on investment banks developing relationships with them.
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch’s outgoing president of its Middle East operations, Fares Noujaim, worked heavily with SWFs and his tipped replacement, Saeed Maghdoori, will likely do the same.
Similarly, Morgan Stanley shifted three bankers out to Dubai in April last year to befriend SWF clients, and Deutsche Bank hired a nine-man steering committee to focus on sovereign funds.
The Abu Dhabi SWFs, banks, family offices and asset management are causing a major brain drain at Dubai’s DIFC by bidding all the talent from the international banks established there. Executives there insecure with the misfortunes of their parent companies in the US, UK and Europe aren’t thinking twice to jump to these powerhouses. Meanwhile Abu Dhabi consious of that isn’t hesitating one second to take advantage of the favourable trend.
Of course the key question to ask is if these companies, and specially ADIC, are making any money or any acceptable return on equity.
I guess everybody knows how to spend a lot of money recruiting but not everybody can make good returns.
Besides , does all this recruiting makes any sense?
I am interested to work for SWF in investment banking sector . I will be graduating by August so could u tell me the details of the applying procedure and the different openings at SWF
good
The problem was that these funds were not immunized against systemic risks. Local banks (except Kuwait) were almost unaffected by the subprime crisis. But the mandates given to hedge funds and Western financial institutions were the cause of heavy losses.
ADIA has agreed not to have been vigilant enough in the governance of its mandates.
Now they have no other choice but to develop asset management internally to better secure the management process in line with the expectation of return on investment of States.
In any case, I think we can bring our expertise to this region and these SWFs. In exchange the future of my children might be more fulfilling than staying in a country aging and sagging under debt and taxes.
For my generation it may be the opportunity to change the world a bit and rebuild a new finance. This is my dream engine.
If SWF is really recruiting banking professionals, there has to be some vacancies in the market afterall talent pool is the same across UAE. However no such signs yet?
Not only SWFs in Abu Dhabi but also royal offices, family offices, domestic and international banks are quitely but aggressevely adding staff. Previuous teams lost a lot of money but with the oil at $ 70 they are loaded again (in fact never stop being) and rebuilding all the teams but because they don’t have enough stock of laocal talent they have been importing from every where and when they like you no ticket is too big.
Hiring spree in the Gulf getting momentum.