HSBC says Dubai is ideal base to tap into new growth across the region

The comments came following a meeting between the bank’s group chairman Mark E Tucker and Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed, Minister of Finance, deputy ruler of Dubai and deputy prime minister.

As group chairman of HSBC Holdings, Tucker is in charge of one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations. He was discussing the conglomerate’s plans to expand its operations in the region out of its base in Dubai. 

In response, Sheikh Maktoum said Dubai is always exploring new ways to work with international banking and financial companies to shape a new future for the industry in the region.

”As part of this effort, Dubai is also enhancing the soft and hard infrastructure to accelerate digital transformation in the sector and provide a conducive environment for new financial technologies to develop,” Sheikh Maktoum added.

Tucker said during the meeting that Dubai continues to provide the banking conglomerate the ideal base to serve its clients and tap new growth avenues across the region, according to state-owned news agency WAM. 

The group chairman said the UAE represents one of HSBC’s major growth markets across the world, and his organisation is committed to further invest and grow its business in the country.

Since opening its first branch in Dubai in 1946, HSBC has played a significant role in the UAE’s economic and social development. In 2019, HSBC opened its new $250 million Middle East headquarters in Dubai, which houses 3,000 employees.

In February, Richard Godfrey, HSBC’s global co-head of securities services, said economic reforms across the Gulf have driven a surge of new liquidity into the region and a re-appraisal of prospects for local financial markets by global investors.

“The region continues to offer significant investment opportunities and the pace of reforms has been phenomenal.

“Local markets have reflected this through increased market activity and higher growth,” Godfrey told an HSBC’s annual Markets & Securities Services Middle East forum.

Billions of dollars of fund inflows into the region’s asset markets from around the world have been triggered by a series of reforms to liberalise access for international investors, create new hedging instruments, and increase institutional investor participation, he added.

Godfrey also said that a structural reform to the UAE’s working week announced early in 2022 that aligns the country to the schedule of the world’s biggest capital markets in Asia, Europe and the United States, had set the stage for a further surge of fund flows.