Hundreds of investors gathered in Abu Dhabi on Thursday to discuss the future of family offices, a growing group that is channelling growing wealth into the region at a crucial time of economic transformation.
“Our mission is to move away from oil,” Abdulrahman Al Suwaidi, managing director of AS Investments in the UAE, joked during a panel at the Abu Dhabi Family Office Summit on Saadiyat Island.
Instead, investors looking to protect intergenerational wealth in the Gulf are looking to the region’s diversification strategies, such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the UAE’s “Future Economy” initiative, to guide their investment decisions.
Al Suwaidi, who was previously head of investments at Al Maktoums Dubai Holdings, the ruling family of Dubai’s family office, said his current fund is putting capital into food security (it owns a stake in Britain’s largest halal chicken farm) and green energy.
How to effectively navigate a market that is flooded with fund managers looking to raise capital in some parts of the world is key, said Ali Raza, chief investment officer at Saudi Holding Co.
“This is true everywhere in the world, but here the disparities are really big,” Raza said.
Echoing Al Suwaidi, he implored fundraisers to look to the country’s economic transformation strategy, which is looking for partners to find opportunities.
Raza said his fund is putting money into electric vehicles, future mobility, semiconductors and data centers. “Think literally about Vision 2030,” he advised.
Family offices in the Middle East have grown rapidly in recent years, with total assets under management predicted to reach $500 billion by 2025. Forbes.
About 45% of family offices in the region manage portfolios worth between $251 million and $500 million, while a further 32% manage portfolios worth between $2.1 billion and $5 billion.
Though slightly more advanced than their Asian peers, the family office concept is relatively new in the region, with fewer than half having been in operation for more than 10 years. Forbes found.
By comparison, roughly two-thirds of family offices in the US and UK have been in existence for more than 10 years.
