BNY Mellon, the US bank which manages more than $2.3 trillion of assets, expects its Middle East business to outpace its global growth levels over the next five years, driven by a boost in the Arab world’s two-largest economies. The bank last year recorded “healthy, single-digit” year-on-year organic growth across markets including the Middle East and Africa, which was driven by new businesses. However, it expects the region to outperform its global business growth over the next five years on the back of growth in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Sovereigns in the six-member economic bloc of the GCC are transforming their economies to cut their dependence on oil revenue. The opening up of the financial sector and attracting foreign direct investment are among the central planks of regional economic overhaul agendas. Foreign capital flows to the regional capital markets, some of the best-performing bourses in the world and have risen amid continued reforms over the past few years. GCC government and corporate issuers have also tapped debt capital markets amid historically low global interest rates that have created more business opportunities for banks such as BNY Mellon.
The bank’s client base includes sovereign wealth funds, regional central banks, commercial lenders, insurance companies and regional pension funds as well as corporate issuers. In terms of investment management business, BNY Mellon’s clientele, “without exception”, is interested in due diligence on environment, government and social standards and “understanding the dynamics of underlying investments in companies at the individual security level and in portfolios or funds at the aggregate level. NY Mellon, which set up its representative office in Abu Dhabi Global Market in 2019, has conducted business in the region for more than 100 years. It opened its first regional representative office in Lebanon in 1963 and was also granted a branch license in 2008 by the Dubai Financial Services Authority.