The Gulf is fast becoming a hub for capital in all its forms — and the big players know it. Nearly every week, a new global asset manager or hedge fund sets its sights on either Abu Dhabi or Dubai — and it’s no secret that Riyadh and Doha are becoming strong contenders. The GCC’s asset management industry grew its assets under management (AUM) to USD 2.2 tn in 2024, up 9% from the previous year, according to a recent report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Most of that was led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The UAE is now home to BlackRocks Blackstones, and State Streets of the world — but there’s also a flurry of local and regional asset managers that are looking to gain ground amid rising interest in the region by capitalizing on their local knowledge and networks.

Chief among those local players: Mashreq Capital, which, although currently in a reinvention phase, has a rich history of wealth management that spans decades and has been a pioneer in the space much like Mashreq has been in the UAE’s banking industry. It started managing money from 2004, was one of the first to be incorporated in DIFC in 2006, and launched the first MENA equities (2005), fixed income (2006), and sukuk (2009) funds in the region.

Being one of the oldest UAE-born asset managers means it has gone through several phases — and the current phase is one of transformation, which is coming at a time of broader transformation within the global asset management industry.

Mashreq Capital CEO Philip Philippides (LinkedIn) took the helm of Mashreq Capital late last year and is a veteran in the industry. He joined Morgan Stanley’s MSCI and iShares at the inception of their success. When he first joined MSCI, it was a small team of front office staff, and revenues were in the single digit mns. By the time he left six years later, the front office had increased to nearly 200 people, and revenues had also ballooned by multiples.

It was a similar story at iShares, which he joined at the infancy of the ETF wave that grew exponentially to become a multi-tn USD industry, and at Amundi, which he joined in 2014 at the very early stages of their ETF growth.

He also knows a thing or two about building something from the ground up. Working as a financial advisor, he set up a wealth management firm with colleagues that grew to have over 25 advisors. He also started a consulting firm where he helped asset managers with their strategy and managed to lock in major clients, including Mashreq.

We sat down with him and asked him what he thinks about tokenized funds, how local and regional asset managers can stay ahead of global competition, and what AI will change about investing in the next few years.

For starters, he sees plenty in the region to be excited about — and it’s not all for the global players’ taking. The government and regulators in the UAE want to build the local asset management industry, and the regulatory environment is progressive enough to support it, Philippides says.

Background: One recent regulation the Securities and Commodities Authority implemented requires foreign fund managers to establish domestic feeder funds or apply for a license here in order to market their funds to retail investors. This helps the regional asset managers that are already operating in the region with local funds and has also prompted a slew of domestic feeder funds from the likes of Franklin Templeton and Varys Capital in order to retain market access.

The key for local asset managers like Mashreq Capital is to be manufacturers, he added. “We’re not going to do everything under the sun, but we can develop solutions for clients that go beyond simply white labeling,” he explained.

The goal for Mashreq Capital is to now become a “new age asset manager” with a multi-asset framework — using technology to scale up while staying lean, and offering innovative products in under-represented segments, from equities to private assets.

Take shariah-compliant funds, for example. This space lacks innovation, and that’s something that local asset managers can take the lead on, Philippides said. “There is an opportunity in the Sharia-compliant fund space, both on the public equity and fixed income sides and well as the private assets space,” he said.

“Generally, investors only have plain vanilla products tracking the Global Islamic Index, and that’s quite limiting,” he explained, adding that a lot of the innovation happening on the conventional side of assets and equities is not yet being translated into Islamic assets. It’s also unlikely that the foreign asset managers will be the ones leading this innovation, so there’s a window for regional players here, he added.

Another trend Mashreq Capital is keeping a close eye on is the shift away from active investing. Active investing has been losing out to passive for a while, with active funds seeing USD 0.1 tn in global outflows in 2024, and passive products drawing USD 1.6 tn in inflows. “This is because most active managers are not able to beat passive investing consistently, after fees” Philippides said, citing the reduced costs, efficiency, and solid returns that come from passive investing.

But the downside is: The boat for passive funds has sailed for many asset managers. “You need size and scale to do passive effectively, so very few people can play in that area,” he explained.

What Philippides is interested in: Passive with a sprinkle of active in the mix — or what he calls “passive plus.” “It’s basically where you say we’re not going to do just passive, we’re going to try and outperform passive by a little bit by beating the benchmark and the fees and adding a bit of active investing to the strategy,” he said, explaining that the added risk that would come with that is not significant enough to deter investors, but lucrative enough so that it boosts returns.

The potential savior of active investing? That could be AI. The problem with active investing is that it largely depends on the team and the people leading with it, and a lack of consistency, he said. AI can help develop more of those teams and enhance the data that a human-only portfolio team can consider, he explained. Another factor it can help with is timing, which is critical for active investing — in that it can help teams take positions by flagging opportune moments, he added.

Data will also become key to asset managers. They can start creating proprietary databases and that will become the differentiator, alongside the tools they use, Philippides said.

And tokenization? That’s like “ETFs 2.0,” he noted. “What did ETFs do? They took a relatively clunky operational structure, which is the fund, where you wait for a price of your transaction for days, and you’re generally paying a lot, and turned this into something where you can invest during trading hours at a price that you know, and that is cheaper,” he said.

That is now a USD 17 tn+ industry, and tokenization has all the makings of becoming similarly massive. “Tokenization also takes a clunky structure and makes it frictionless cost-wise, instantaneous, and 24/7,” he added.

But the challenges that held ETFs back initially will also likely come into play as the tokenization wave takes hold. “The big challenges were: Where do you list it? What’s the liquidity? Who are the market makers? And the conundrum is you need to put capex to launch these products and get the infrastructure required, but you also need to know when it will start paying off,” he added.

Adoption also won’t come easy — but it’s already moving ahead in the institutional space; it’s retail that will take a bit of time, he expects. ETFs saw their biggest jump in adoption after crises, like after 9/11 when markets were closed, he added.

The good news? The region is well positioned to be at the forefront of this wave. People in the region are building, and the regulation is forward-thinking and encouraging of innovation in the digital assets space, which is very promising when compared to their counterparts in Europe and the UK, he said.

Tags: