Abu Dhabi Lays It Out. You Play It Out.

What the city enables, and what you still have to bring.
Abu Dhabi has laid out a set of conditions. They are published, measurable, and available to anyone who wants to use them. None of them builds a business.

That part is yours. The governance that survives institutional diligence. The partner you select, and the basis on which you select them. The regulatory groundwork. The people who have actually run the thing before. And the decision about how far what you build is meant to travel, because a business constituted here can operate across markets, but nothing about that is automatic.

The city lays out the conditions. What gets played out on them is a decision, and it is the only part that was ever genuinely yours.

What has already happened

SCAD's preliminary estimates for the third quarter of 2025, published in February 2026, put Abu Dhabi's economy at AED 325.7 billion, up 7.7% year on year and the highest quarterly value recorded at that point. Non-oil activity grew 7.6% and accounted for 54% of total GDP.

An economy founded on hydrocarbons now derives the majority of its output from everything else. Not a target. A measured outcome, published by the emirate's own statisticians, and the reason a plan built here can assume more than it could a decade ago.

What the city lays out

Capital depth. The UAE attracted USD 48.3 billion of foreign direct investment in 2025, a fourth consecutive record year and ninth place globally, per UNCTAD. That measures the country's attractiveness to investors rather than any single business's access to them, but markets that draw capital at that rate tend to accumulate the advisers, co-investors and specialists who follow it.

A choice of legal framework. Abu Dhabi Global Market applies English common law directly, with its own courts and independent regulator. Where a business elects to use it, the governing law and the forum are ones an international counterparty's own counsel already works in. It is one of several routes the emirate has built.

Trade architecture. Since 2021 the UAE has built a network of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, under a national agenda targeting AED 4 trillion in non-oil foreign trade and AED 800 billion in non-oil exports by 2031.

Talent. The combined workforce across Al Maryah and Al Reem reached 49,027 professionals in the first half of 2026. A concentration of that kind means depth in the market a business hires from and transacts with, and proximity to the institutions and offices those professionals sit in.

Standing. Moody's rates the UAE Aa2, S&P AA and Fitch AA minus, each stable.

What playing it out requires

Several things turn conditions into a business, and none is supplied by a jurisdiction.

Governance that withstands institutional diligence. Regulatory readiness: the right licence category, the real capital and compliance obligations, the actual approval timeline. And operating capability, people who have run it before, at the relevant scale.

Partner selection. Relationships and formal search both originate opportunities, and in Abu Dhabi both are productive: the concentration of senior operators and institutions here means an introduction often carries real substance, and the depth of the market means a search has something to find. Where an opportunity comes from does not change what follows. Every partner is assessed against the same requirements.

And a vision paced to the city's own. Abu Dhabi has moved quickly. A plan built to a slower clock can find the market has moved past it before the plan matures. One approach, not the only one, is to set the horizon against the pace of the place rather than against habit.

How we have approached it

Every institution here decides how to use what the city offers. Ours has been to build along the lines of national priority, not as a gesture, but because that is where the demand case is clearest and the horizon longest. We have done so proudly, and we continue to.

Our acquisition in Al Ain Mills was driven by national priorities in food security, and by building logistics and infrastructure across the wider food cycle rather than holding a single point in it. With Guggenheim Brothers Media, the capability is reach: a fund constituted here, with an international partner supplying distribution into the global creative economy. With Institut Marquès, through FutureLife, it is operating standard, clinical governance and consistent delivery across markets. Reproductive health is an emirate-wide priority: the Department of Health is running a programme to raise IVF success rates from 59% to 80%, on a roadmap to 2030. And with a regional bank, it is structure: a bank within ADGM, built from Abu Dhabi for clients operating across borders in both directions.

Both directions

Capital arrives where conditions are credible and durable. It travels outward when the businesses it funds are governed, structured and staffed to be transacted with anywhere. Both halves rest on the same thing: that what is built here is built to a standard that survives contact with an international counterparty.

Abu Dhabi lays it out. You play it out.