Progress with Purpose | Asia Summit 2025

Strategic Priorities and Risk Assessment

• The primary risk identified by Dubai leadership is inertia and complacency rather than external geopolitical volatility.
• Dubai operates on a "risk of doing nothing" philosophy, emphasizing continuous adaptation over static long-term planning.
• Implementation is structured via three-year plans broken into 100-day sprints, utilizing real-time data to adjust strategies daily.
• The leadership mindset maintains a "7 out of 10" performance standard to ensure perpetual improvement rather than settling for existing success.

Geopolitics, Tariffs, and Globalization

• Geopolitics and the investment landscape have fully collided, ending the "benign" global environment that existed for roughly 30 years prior to 2020.
• Globalization has fragmented into a new, undefined model driven by rising nationalism, populism, and tariffs.
• Supply chain reconfiguration prioritizes resilience over efficiency, introducing structural costs that are likely to sustain higher inflation rather than being a one-off event.
• The shift from multilateralism to transactionalism is driving nations to protect domestic industries, creating friction in global value chains.

Dubai's Growth and Competitiveness

• In 2024, Dubai was the fastest-growing city in the Global Financial Center Index and the fastest-growing population among global business hubs.
• Dubai positions itself as a "global super connector," attracting high-net-worth individuals and shifting from a transient market to a permanent home for talent and capital.
• Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) rose 60% year-over-year in the first half of the reporting period; Dubai now attracts 8% of global FDI despite representing only 0.1% of global GDP.
• Dubai currently has 22 Chief AI Officers appointed across government departments to drive productivity and public sector modernization.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Investment Thesis

• AI is viewed as the most pervasive shift in the political, social, and economic spheres in the last 50 years, requiring both operational workflow changes and portfolio future-proofing.
• Investment strategy focuses on a DDAG framework: Digitization, Data, AI, and Cyber security integration.
• Monetization potential is increasingly seen in Small Language Models (SLMs) focused on specific verticals rather than general Large Language Models (LLMs).
• A divergence exists between the U.S. model (heavy upstream R&D in chips/physics) and the Chinese model (pragmatic application to existing manufacturing and robotics).
• Energy and permitting are identified as the primary constraints on data center expansion; China holds a significant advantage in renewable energy generation and unitary government permitting efficiency.

Demographics and Workforce Dynamics

• Aging populations in the West and North Asia are driving investment opportunities in healthcare, retirement products, and life insurance.
• In low-fertility regions, robotics, automation, and AI are becoming essential to offset labor shortages and advance economic development.
• Dubai has leveraged progressive visa policies, specifically the 10-year Golden Visa, to attract and retain global talent, aiming to match or exceed the success of historical H-1B migration.
• UAE AI talent density now ranks in the top 10 globally, comparable to the UK and ahead of several European markets.

Defense, Diversification, and Market Structure

• Defense investment is approached through a lens of economic diversification and risk mitigation rather than direct conflict participation.
• To counter trade shocks and supply chain fragmentation, Dubai has expanded its trade network to 400 global cities and is actively creating new trade hubs via acquisitions by entities like DP World and Emirates Sky Cargo.
• Tomacic's portfolio is split roughly 50/50 between public and private equity, with a strategic shift toward increasing public market exposure over the last 18 months.
• Private market advantages (higher potential returns) are balanced against disadvantages (opacity, reduced liquidity), leading to a focus on private credit and core-plus infrastructure as key growth areas.

Long-term Planning and Outlook

• Dubai's strategic horizon extends to 2033 (D33), celebrating 200 years of Al Maktoum leadership.
• Investment cycles are not viewed as static; technology may accelerate some themes while extending the timeline for returns due to the complexity of new global structures.
• The consensus among speakers is that while specific market cycles are difficult to predict, the fundamental need to adapt to interconnected but fragmented global systems remains the dominant driver for capital allocation.