The Middle East

In recent years cyber security has become a key focus in the UAE. “The UAE has vastly improved its fibre network and now ranks as one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of its network infrastructure,” Khaled Obaid Al Othman Al Ali, CEO of the Al Fahad Group, an Abu Dhabi-based defence and security company, told OBG. As one of...

FIRST GULF BANK (FGB): With assets of Dh182.9bn ($49.7bn) at the close of the first half of 2013, FGB is the third-largest bank in Abu Dhabi and the largest privately owned lender. Established in 1978, the historically retail-focused lender had developed a universal set of services,...

As the largest and most populous of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, Abu Dhabi plays a central role in the federation’s economy. Furthermore, due to being the home of the national capital, Abu Dhabi hosts many of the institutions that orchestrate the UAE’s social and economic development, while the hydrocarbons resources which fall...

Boosting economic integration among the Gulf states has been a central objective of the GCC since the organisation was established in late May 1981. Indeed, while the six countries that make up the GCC – namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – have implemented joint projects in a wide variety of sectors, economic...

The government’s significant role in the domestic economy, and the sizeable fiscal spending that underwrites much of the UAE’s infrastructural development, sometimes obscures another important facet of the nation’s economic development. The role played by charitable organisations in the UAE is a prominent one, and a wide array of institutions...