Abu Dhabi’s financial centre has added two of the world’s biggest investment names to its growing roster, with Man Group and Capital Group both announcing plans to establish operations at Abu Dhabi Global Market within days of each other, underscoring the emirate’s accelerating push to position itself as the premier destination for international capital in the Middle East.
Man Group, the London-listed alternative investment manager with approximately $228.7 billion in assets under management and the distinction of being the world’s largest listed hedge fund, confirmed on 7 May that it has submitted an application for a Category 3A licence at ADGM. The planned presence will serve as a strategic regional hub for the firm’s distribution, investment and trading operations across the Middle East, subject to regulatory sign-off. Chief executive Robyn Grew described the submission as “an important milestone” in Man Group’s commitment to the region, noting that the firm’s relationship with Abu Dhabi stretches back more than a decade to its involvement in ADGM’s original expert advisory panel.
Just days earlier, Capital Group — a Los Angeles-based asset manager overseeing $3.3 trillion in client assets — announced plans to open its first-ever office in the Middle East, also at ADGM. The Abu Dhabi base will become the firm’s 35th office worldwide and is expected to formally open later this year, pending regulatory approvals. Capital Group is relocating Benno Klingenberg-Timm, its head of institutional for Europe and Asia, to lead the new operation. Chief executive and president Mike Gitlin said the firm takes a “long-term and deliberate approach” to expanding its global footprint and moves only when conviction is high. The Abu Dhabi office, he said, represents exactly that kind of conviction.
The two announcements land amid a broader wave of institutional capital flowing into ADGM. In recent months, Bain Capital, Barings, and Hillhouse Investment have each opened offices within the centre. Alongside Man Group and Capital Group, ADGM also counts BlackRock, State Street, PGIM and Nuveen among its active residents. The centre reported a 36% rise in assets under management in 2025 and now hosts more than 12,000 active licences across financial and non-financial sectors. Its jurisdiction spans Al Maryah Island and Al Reem Island, making it the largest international financial centre in the Middle East and Africa by active licence count.
ADGM chairman Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi framed both announcements as evidence of deepening global confidence in Abu Dhabi’s capital markets. He pointed to the centre’s regulatory certainty, English Common Law framework and access to long-term capital as the foundations drawing international firms to the emirate. Abu Dhabi is home to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Mubadala Investment Company and ADQ, three of the region’s largest sovereign investors, giving global asset managers immediate proximity to pools of capital that few other financial centres can match.
For Man Group in particular, the timing carries strategic significance. The firm has built a strong reputation in AI-driven and systematic investment strategies, areas where demand from sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors in the Gulf has been climbing steadily. A physical hub in Abu Dhabi gives the firm the ability to deepen relationships with regional allocators and extend its trading infrastructure across time zones that bridge the Asian and European sessions.
The pace at which ADGM is accumulating global names speaks to something broader than marketing or incentive structures. Abu Dhabi is increasingly being treated by international asset managers as a serious long-term base rather than a regional outpost, a shift that reflects both the maturity of its regulatory environment and the scale of the capital being deployed from the emirate into global markets.
