Wrestling to the top

Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed alNahyan, TbZ to his pals, is a busy man. The brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed, is the United Arab Emirates’s national security adviser and the chair of its state holding company, ADQ; its largest lender, First Abu Dhabi Bank; and its $790bn Abu Dhabi Investment Authority; as well as its mysterious International Holding Co (IHC) yet he still finds time to indulge his passion for submission fighting on the global stage via the Abu Dhabi Combat Club.

Three years ago, the IHC was an obscure little company that employed 40 people and ran fish farms and food and real estate businesses. Since TbZ took it over in 2020, it has exploded into a conglomerate spanning energy, food, health, real estate and leisure, employing 150,000 people in 482 subsidiaries and 41 joint ventures and associates in 20 countries. Net profit grew by 181% in 2022 despite what it described as “unfavourable global conditions”, begging the question of what it would do with a fair wind.

In quite possibly the cheesiest corporate video ever produced, well worth a few minutes of anybody’s time on YouTube, it describes its people as “heroes and dreamers restless believers”, and this may well be a part of its secret sauce, though some might suggest that its extraordinary growth is down to its fortunate situation of having large amounts of assets transferred into it from related parties, either at no consideration or at the princely sum of one dirham.

It may not be the most transparent of companies, but it’s certainly becoming a decent-sized one.

SVB CEO Greg Becker called its most important clients to ask them not to panic. Naturally enough, they panicked