A Big Bang would help keep Emirates' status star-bound

UAE stock markets should be unified. It would be to the Emirate's long term benefit if the two exchanges in Dubai and the one in Abu Dhabi were merged into a single entity.

A merger of the UAE's financial markets would be likely to benefit the country's economy. Jeff Topping / The National

UAE stock markets should be unified. It would be to the long-term benefit of the Emirates if the two exchanges in Dubai and the one in Abu Dhabi were merged into a single entity.

It would consolidate and extend the lead the UAE already has as the best hub in the Middle East, and it would be of substantial benefit to the country's economy and its future development.

I can say that with conviction, and I would find it difficult to find a financial professional in the UAE to disagree. But Jeff Singer, the chief executive of Nasdaq Dubai, the UAE's international exchange, cannot say it.

He is an exchange official, and the issue of market consolidation has become a political football between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Mr Singer cannot get involved in that game.

The issue has become so contentious that it threatens to derail the economic progress of the Emirates. As regional stock markets are once again showing signs of a healthy recovery in value and volumes, the UAE is in danger of losing its status as the region's premier financial market.

Qatar, with its own ambitions for regional financial supremacy, is an ever-present threat.

Persistent speculation that Saudi Arabia is on the verge of opening up to foreign share ownership heightens the urgency. The UAE could be on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Just in the past few weeks, two developments have highlighted the potential vulnerability of UAE markets.

NMC, an Abu Dhabi health group that is nearly as old as the UAE itself, decided to list its shares in London rather than the capital or Nasdaq Dubai. That was a serious blow to the prestige of both markets. NMC lobbied hard in Abu Dhabi to persuade the authorities to let it go to London.

Then it emerged that Depa, an interior design company that is virtually synonymous with Dubai via its work kitting out the Burj Khalifa and other prestigious buildings, was considering moving its listing from Nasdaq Dubai, possibly to Singapore or another Asian exchange.

Depa executives are still weighing up the alternatives, but a move outside the UAE is still the favoured option, I hear. More "outsourcing" of the UAE's financial industry looks on the cards.

With all these red flags, UAE policymakers cannot be blind to the threat, nor to the benefits of unification. It has apparently been discussed at the highest levels of the UAE establishment; Goldman Sachs, a US investment bank, filed a detailed proposal for unification many months back.

Now Mr Singer has weighed in with a "road map" that suggests specific steps that should be taken to keep UAE markets in pole position in the GCC.

With so much agreement as to the benefits, it's difficult to know why unification hasn't already come about. Perhaps it boils down to price.

A merger would probably require a financial offer to take over the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), and there may be some in the capital who think the DFM is overvalued. Or it may be about location. With both Dubai and Abu Dhabi investing heavily in the physical infrastructure necessary for a financial centre, there could be an understandable reluctance on either side to pass up the main prize.

But set against the strategic benefit a unified market would bring for the whole of the UAE, neither of these should be a deal breaker.

Mr Singer's "Big Bang" proposals are ambitious and far-reaching. He compares the plan to that which transformed the City of London in 1986, and it would require changes just as fundamental as those which made London Europe's premier financial market.

A full-blown privatisation strategy and the creation of a UAE pensions industry represent huge changes to the social, economic and cultural status quo. The technical difficulties of merging trading platforms, settlement systems and regulatory regimes should also not be underestimated. Those are the potential difficulties.

It would require political will and vision to see the "Big Bang" through, but, once those are forthcoming, it is all upside.

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