More than a trillion dollars of wealth is generated from the Region. Many regional corporations and regional retail banks need specialist asset management services to manage this wealth. Dubai aims to build on its core offerings and create the right environment and the right incentive structure to attract professional institutional asset managers to set up a base in DIFC in order to offer their services to those regional corporations and banks that are in need of convenient, professional and competitive asset management services closer to home.

Hundreds of successful privately owned companies and privatizing government businesses exist in the region that wish to be listed on a liquid, visible and efficient exchange which is attractive to global investors and has the active participation of the premier global investment banks. In partnership with a leading financial market, DIFC will bring to the region a truly world-class regional financial exchange that will complement the services provided by local financial exchanges in the region and serve as the regional gateway for capital and investment.

Issuers in the region will benefit from improved regional and global visibility for their companies and greater access to capital from global investment houses. Investors will benefit by getting access to a wider range of regional investment opportunities thorough a single accessible window. The resulting aggregation of the regional liquidity will provide a more efficient allocation of capital and investments benefiting both issuers and investors.

A multi billion dollar global market exists for Islamic finance products and services, yet this sector is still very much under developed. The sector is fragmented and suffers from a lack of adequate products to satisfy the rapidly increasing demand and the increasing sophistication of investors. There is also no shortage of Islamic-finance compliant infrastructure development projects in the region requiring billions of dollars of funding. Dubai aims to become a center for product innovation and development for Islamic investors, where more infrastructure development projects and regional financing needs are funded through new Islamic finance instruments.

Consolidation of financial services, back-office operations and outsourcing have been a continued trend in developed economies. With its world-class IT infrastructure and access to the huge regional pool of human resources, Dubai is ideally positioned to become a location of choice for global back-office operations of banks and other financial institutions. In partnership with the Dubai Internet City, DIFC offers a very competitive and attractive value proposition to both large and small banks that would increase their operational effectiveness and efficiency while reducing their costs.

In addition to proactively attracting key players in its five areas of focus, DIFC will also be open to other sectors of institutional finance and will be the best regional location for the international business units of commercial banks, investment banks, wholesale financial institutions and fund management firms. DIFC will also host professional service providers critical to the development of the regional financial sector such as credit rating agencies, professional service firms, law firms and information service providers.