UAE: Dubai

Capital markets in Dubai are spread across multiple exchanges, each with an emphasis on a different asset class. With this structure established and still growing, the aim is to boost activity in all asset classes, and to create an overall offering with the breadth and depth to rival major global financial centres.

The focus on adding new instruments in Dubai – among them futures and options swaps – is being spurred on by the drive to boost liquidity on the emirate’s trading platforms. It comes with an emphasis on foreign institutional investors, with those from what are considered well-regulated markets being granted remote access to the trading...

One of the major economic changes in Dubai and the UAE in 2018 was the introduction of a 5% value-added tax (VAT). Dubai and other jurisdictions on the Arabian Peninsula have long been popular for their lack of personal and corporate income taxes, and while they remain low-tax jurisdictions overall, this new levy is expected to add...

With regional economies still feeling the effects of lower oil prices since mid-2014, trade wars occurring across the globe, a stronger US dollar pushing up the value of the dirham and increased risks weighing on investor sentiment, Dubai and the UAE have introduced a diverse set of cost-cutting reforms that are largely designed to encourage...

Decades of growth in trade and foreign investment have seen the economies of the world become more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. The production of goods and, increasingly, the provision of services has become fractured across borders as corporations create and integrate into regional and global value chains – a process...