As Qatari sovereign and corporate money moves abroad, Mashreq is following it out the door

Qatari capital keeps finding its way to London, New York, and Cairo as sovereign and quasi-sovereign investors deploy hydrocarbon wealth at a scale the domestic market alone can’t absorb. Mashreq’s Qatar franchise is building its strategy around trailing that money wherever it lands, Country Head Salman Gulzar tells EnterpriseAM.

BACKGROUND- Mashreq’s roots in Qatar date back to October 1971, making it the bank’s first market outside Dubai. Since then, the bank has played a major role in backing some of Qatar’s biggest infrastructure projects — including contractor financing for Hamad International Airport, the Doha Metro, multiple FIFA World Cup stadiums, the Qatar National Library, and Qatar Education City Trams, alongside extensive road, water, and power infrastructure across the country. That heritage is now the platform for something broader: chasing the same clients as their capital moves offshore.

The lender is following deployments abroad by Qatari entities like the Qatar Investment Authority and its real estate investment arm Diar, including the risk-management book (interest rate and currency hedges) that comes with it, Gulzar tells us. The approach, he says, is agnostic on structure: bilateral or syndicated, whichever the client actually needs. “We support our clients in the structure that best serves their objectives — whether that is bilateral, syndicated, or capital markets-based — and we have seamlessly moved between these formats as transactions evolve,” he says.

A green transaction for Qatari Diar is the latest sign of where the investment-tracking strategy is headed. Mashreq recently facilitated a GBP 450 mn green loan refinancing for The Chancery Rosewood hotel in Grosvenor Square — marking one of the bank’s largest green financing facilities of the year, Gulzar says. It follows Mashreq’s first sustainability-linked facility with Landmark Retail in Qatar in 2024, which marked the country’s first bilateral SLF agreement in the private sector.

Why it matters: Qatari sovereign and quasi-sovereign capital is increasingly deploying outside the country’s borders (Read: The Gulf is writing cheques as often as it is cashing them). Gulzar’s read is that global mandates are ultimately earned through relationship depth at home.

The domestic strategy has evolved with Qatar’s economy

In 2016, Mashreq took the strategic decision to exit retail banking in Qatar, consolidating its presence from five branches to one and sharpening its focus on corporate and institutional banking. The embargo hit the following year, in the middle of that unwind, and forced a second, more consequential shift: less dependent on what Gulzar called “elephant hunting” — where the team went after large one-off transactions — and an intensified focus on the more granular working-capital needs of clients.

“2017 forced us to look internally,” Gulzar says. Today, 40% of Mashreq Qatar’s book is working capital, supporting sectors ranging from FMCG and electronics to white goods and automotive distribution.

That experience has also shaped the bank’s response to this year’s regional conflict. Mashreq’s transaction banking and relationship teams were engaging clients on letters of credit, supply-chain resilience, and logistics contingencies within the first week of the disruption, Gulzar says. Throughout the disruptions, the bank did not suspend cash-deposit services for a single day and remained the only fully operating bank for clients for a period of 10 days.

Real estate is another major focal point

That same follow-the-client philosophy underpins Mashreq’s real estate push in Qatar, which brings a successful franchise, developed in Dubai’s mature property market, to the Gulf country. This comes as Qatar has been pushing to boost real estate supply and deepen its property market as part of a broader diversification push, especially after the World Cup helped trigger more demand, with investments in projects like Lusail City, The Pearl-Qatar, and Msheireb Downtown.

Its credentials so far: The bank has played a leading role in some of the sector’s biggest transactions, including advising on Qatar’s largest private-sector real estate syndication and the country’s first USD 1 bn corporate sukuk. It’s now also an advisor to the government on real estate regulatory matters, including supporting the development and implementation of the country’s escrow account framework.