Mubadala Development, the strategic investment company owned by the Abu Dhabi Government, plans a new round of expansion aimed at Asian growth markets, including the two biggest: China and India.
"On a global platform, we have to get into India and China," Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Mubadala's chief executive and managing director, told The National. "Today the story is all about getting into areas where there is growth, and those countries, along with Korea and Singapore for example, are where the growth is going to be."
This month, Mubadala celebrates a decade as a corporate entity: "The template driving the next 10 years will remain the same," said Mr Al Mubarak. "We have to focus on assets and how to derive maximum value from them. The next sector will be the one that fits the same criteria as the past ones. We have to have continuity."
Mubadala made its biggest investment yet in the world's faster-growing economies earlier this year with the purchase of a US$2 billion (Dh7.34bn) stake in the Brazilian conglomerate EBX Group.
Mr Al Mubarak's comments are a clear sign the group sees itself as a bridge between East and West in the global economy. But it will not give up on more traditional markets such as the United States, where it already has significant manufacturing and investment interests.
"The USA is an important economy and marketplace and will continue to be," said Mr Al Mubarak. "I continue to believe in the US economy, and in the innovation that comes out of the USA. It will always be a dynamic economy, and in a nutshell, we will always be in the USA."
But he had cautious words on the global economy. "The world is evolving in a dramatic and erratic way. The team [at Mubadala] worked hard to deal with it in 2008, and they will have to continue to do so, because this crisis is not over."
On the group's investment in Aldar, the Abu Dhabi property company that has been affected by the downturn in property prices, Mr Al Mubarak said: "We're happy to be a significant shareholder. As you know there are merger negotiations going on with Surouh and I cannot say too much about that, but we are committed to it [Aldar] and will support it."
Mr Al Mubarak paid tribute to the new generation of executives at Mubadala. "The beauty of what we've created here is that it isn't dependent on one person, we have a fantastic group of individuals and executives, and we've grown them organically."
In 10 years Mubadala has grown from a company with interests primarily in oil and gas to become a diversified portfolio of global businesses. In its last set of financial results it announced revenue of Dh16bn, operating income of Dh2.2bn and total assets of Dh195bn in the first half of this year.
At the same time, it has retained as its main aim the ambition to act as a "catalyst" for the economic diversification of Abu Dhabi and to produce "tangible social benefits" for the emirate.
In its first decade, Mubadala created 10,000 jobs in the emirate and it aims to provide a further 8,000 new positions by 2020. Some may come in new semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the UAE, said Mr Al Mubarak.
More than 160,000 patients were treated in Mubadala healthcare facilities last year, and some 20,000 university places are now available on campuses developed by Mubadala.
