The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is seeking to collaborate with more banks that are present in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the UAE capital’s international financial centre, according to ADNOC’s CEO and Minister of State Dr Sultan Al Jaber and cited by Reuters.
Dr Al Jaber’s comments were intended to boost the developing financial hub by attracting more banking institutions to Abu Dhabi as the country’s richest emirate seeks to diversify its economy beyond oil and gas.
“We will, as we did in the past couple of years, engage more with the financial sector and one of the criteria we will be evaluating is … have they decided to engage physically in Abu Dhabi Global Market,” Dr Al Jaber said.
ADNOC has looked to the equity and bond markets to generate capital in recent times. Subsidiary company ADNOC Distribution held its initial public offering in December and the oil giant has also accrued billions of dollars in liabilities including a $3bn loan with a Japanese export credit agency in January.
The ADGM opened in October 2015.