In March 2008, Ala’a Eraiqat, who was then the deputy CEO, was awarded The Asian Banker Promising Young Banker Award for the Gulf region for significantly growing the lender’s core business, assets and customer deposits while also maintaining the lowest ratio of bad loans in the UAE.

In October, the lender announced a decline of 57 percent in net profit for the nine-month period ending September 30.

Commenting on the results Eraiqat said: “These are good headline numbers and we are pleased with the outcome. We continue to invest in our core businesses as well as in people, systems and processes to position ourselves to benefit from an economic upturn.”

He added that its property subsidiary Abu Dhabi Commercial Properties, which manages over 56,000 residential and commercial units across the UAE capital, continues to be “a profitable, and a successful public private partnership.”