Abu Dhabi is quickly cementing its position as the Middle East’s go-to hub for family offices, the audience heard during a panel discussion titled ‘Can the Middle East’s family office boom endure?’, held on 9 December 2025 at the Jumeirah at Saadiyat Island Resort.
Chaired by Spear’s editor-in-chief Edwin Smith, in association with by PwC, the session brought together Ismael Hajjar of PwC Middle East, Thomas Hudson of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), Niels Zilkens of UBS Global Wealth Management and Asad Hussaini of Scimitar Family Office to discuss the rapid development of Abu Dhabi’s family office sector – and what to expect from it in the future.
The speakers told the audience Abu Dhabi is no longer just a place to register their structures, but a base where families are actually making investment decisions day to day, with family offices often also running investment platforms. According to figures cited during the session, the number of operational entities within Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has risen to 3,227 – a 43 per cent increase year-on-year.
‘This isn’t just about legal structuring,’ Hudson said. ‘It’s about people actually coming to live here themselves and then bring all their personal business here as well.’
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That shift has changed the profile of family offices operating in the emirate. Hajjar described two broad groups. The first are long-established regional families, often with wealth tied to operating businesses and real estate, who are now transitioning from running companies to managing capital as investors. The second are internationally mobile families and entrepreneurs, many of whom have arrived since the Covid-19 pandemic, using Abu Dhabi as a base to build institutional investment platforms.
For both groups, ‘professionalisation’ of wealth, as Hajjar put it, was a recurring theme.
As wealth transfers to younger generations, families are rethinking how they manage capital, governance and risk, the panel said. ‘If you want to be here and do business, you cannot just fly in and out,’ Zilkens told the panel. ‘You have to be on the ground.’
Much of the discussion centred on the practical frameworks enabling this shift. The panellists highlighted the growing use of special purpose vehicles, family foundations and ADGM’s single family office licence, introduced in 2024, which allows families to manage their own wealth without being subject to full regulatory requirements. These structures have been a true ‘game-changer’, Hajjar explained, offering families governance and legal clarity under common law while remaining tax efficient.
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But speakers were also clear that Abu Dhabi is not without its challenges. Hussaini described the reality of setting up operations as more complex than many expect, mentioning difficulties such as banking access and the limited depth of certain asset classes.
As he noted, ‘the sponsored market here is still quite nascent,’ while Zilkens added that ‘regulatory requirements are expensive, and the cost of setting up can eat into returns.’
Those complexities are shaping how family offices operate. Rather than importing established models, they are building teams around local operators, investing in public markets or incubating businesses from the ground up. ‘You can’t just copy-paste a New York model and expect it to work,’ he said, pointing out that family offices moving to the emirate should build around frameworks and structures that are specifically designed to work locally.
Despite the challenges discussed, panellists indicated that Abu Dhabi’s family office ecosystem is indeed entering a settled phase. With more institutions operating on the ground, the focus is now more on best practice for day-to-day operations, rather than questions around whether to set up in the region.
