ABU DHABI, 22 February 2007 — Abu Dhabi Securities Market (ADSM) is seeking to attract exchange traded funds (ETFs) to boost institutional investment, ADSM Acting Director-General Rashed Al-Baloushi said yesterday.
“As our markets develop and grow and as part of our plans to attract local and foreign institutional investors, we will encourage financial institutions to launch ETFs which would be a new instrument in the Gulf capital markets,” he said.
An ETF is a form of collective investment scheme that tracks an index or market sector. It is managed as a company whose objective is to achieve the same return as a particular market index or sector, and in that way, it is similar to an index fund except that it is listed on a stock exchange.
ETFs are a kind of collective investment instruments which minimizes the risk of investors. This kind of instruments are popularly used in the US and European countries.
“ADSM would like to introduce such kinds of instruments and be a pioneer in the Gulf countries,” Baloushi said.
ADSM announced that it will host its first Leadership Forum on March 7 titled “Exchange Traded Funds — Challenges and Opportunities,” at the Emirates Palace Hotel. It will be the first of its kind to be held in Abu Dhabi.
Designed to promote the concept of ETFs in the UAE, the ADSM leadership forum will, for the first time, bring together fund managers, institutional investors, lawyers, regulators, and other experts with senior Arab and GCC officials to debate the challenges and opportunities for the establishment of ETF’s in the UAE.
