Emirates Investment Bank assets under management jump 81% to Dh7.7 billion

Investment banking in the region had been increasingly active with Emirates Investment Bank's team dealing with more mergers and acquisitions and demand for underwriting initial public offerings.

Khaled Sifri, the chief executive of Emirates Investment Bank, says the lender is optimisticabout its growth in 2015 and onwards. Lee Hoagland / The National

Emirates Investment Bank yesterday said its total assets under management jumped 81 per cent last year as the economy boomed and the UAE’s safe haven status continued to attract funds from politically troubled countries in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Total assets under management increased to Dh7.72 billion last year from Dh4.27bn in 2013, the boutique investment and private bank said. Net profit last year increased 28 per cent to Dh46.23 million compared with Dh36.23m in 2013, while customer deposits advanced 78 per cent to Dh2.99bn from Dh1.67bn in 2013.

In the fourth quarter of last year, however, when the price of oil and stock indexes in the UAE fell by more than 30 per cent, the bank’s profit decreased 6.4 per cent to Dh5.28m from Dh5.64m, Emirates Investment Bank (EIBank) said.

"High net worth individuals globally are always looking for different places to take their wealth and they have identified the UAE as a successful place to do that," Khaled Sifri, the chief executive of EIBank, told The National. "Not just in emerging markets but in developed markets like Europe."

Mr Sifri said that as well as a bigger intake of funds from clients, investment banking in the region had been increasingly active with EIBank’s team dealing with more mergers and acquisitions and demand for underwriting initial public offerings.

EIBank’s private banking services have been bolstered in recent years as wealthy individuals in the region shifted money from offshore accounts in a bid to acquire closer and more personalised services from local banks that have matched the level of service of the big Swiss private banks such as UBS and Credit Suisse.

“Emirates Investment Bank today offers a very unique platform for investors to access markets that are matched with a calibre of service that is usually expected of international private banks,” said Mr Sifri. “There are few others who are local in nature who are committed to this category of client.”

In the past couple of years, UAE bank growth has been propelled by an economy recovering from the financial crash of 2008, with lenders starting to stage a comeback in full force in 2012 as government spending on roads, airports and other infrastructure trickled down to the wider economy, spurring demand for loans to finance everything from home purchases to corporate expansion.

Banks here have also benefited from capital inflows from Egypt, Syria and Libya as well as other emerging markets such as China into bank accounts, property and stocks.

Last year, the UAE economy is estimated to have grown more than 4 per cent, even after the price of oil fell more than 50 per cent during the course of 2014. As a result of that plunge in oil, many economists, including those at HSBC and Standard Chartered, have lowered their 2015 growth forecasts for Arabian Gulf countries.

Still, banks are putting their faith in the UAE’s non-oil economy to boost growth. “We are optimistic about our growth in 2015 and onwards as we don’t think the global economy is going to collapse,” said Mr Sifri.

Elsewhere, Commercial Bank International, the Dubai-based lender in which Qatar National Bank has a 40 per cent stake, said its profit for 2014 was Dh133.5m. It did not give a comparative figure for 2013.

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