Bloomberg is out with a deep dive on the UAE’s rise as a global hedge fund magnet — and it’s not just capital doing the pulling. A wave of relocations is being driven by traders themselves, with firms like Dymon Asia, Millennium Management, Point72, and Brevan Howard expanding in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to keep their talent happy. Zero income tax, a globally connected time zone, and expat-friendly policies have helped tip the scales, as well as increasingly stringent regulatory and tax environments in other finance centers like the UK and Singapore.
Investors are no longer conflating the UAE with the broader Middle East, and despite the current escalating regional conflicts, the “perceived risk to most is greater than what major investors and funds actually factor into decision-making,” said Dubai-based headhunter Rahnpreet Sandhu.
ALSO- A push from regional oil giants into LNG dominance also received ink from the international press, with Bloomberg reporting on Gulf players’, including the UAE’s Adnoc and Saudi’s Aramco, expansion into liquified natural gas markets. LNG’s position as a transition fuel in the renewables drive and its quick growth are behind moves like Adnoc’s USD 18.7 bn bid for Australia’s Santos, the business news information service said. Economic diversification efforts and strong margins in the LNG sector were also cited as being behind Gulf plays into the field, previously dominated by US firms.