ADSM participates in the UAE Investment Focus Day organized by Bloomberg

The conference events focused on the investment opportunities available in the financial markets in UAE, as well as the definition of applicable laws and regulations. The conference held on Tuesday 6 November, was attended by nearly 300 participants representing 127 companies, and by representatives of the Securities and Commodities Authority, Abu Dhabi Securities Market, Dubai Financial Market, as well as representatives of brokerage firms.

This conference comes in the framework of Bloomberg plan in cooperation with the UAE stock markets to have a Focus Day that aims at attracting investment banks and funds to take advantage of investment opportunities in UAE.

Mr. Tom Healy, Director General of Abu Dhabi Securities Market (ADSM), reviewed during the Conference the current infrastructure that ADSM has put in place to ensure that trading activities are as per international best practice to give more confidence to international investors in an attempt to attract foreign investments to UAE generally and Abu Dhabi in particular. Through his speech, Mr Healy highlighted ADSM's initiatives to enhance and extend transparency and disclosure and praised the cooperation of the UAE regulator in enforcing adequate corporate governance rules.

He added, "ADSM employs the latest proven technology and has been implementing a best practice program that would encourage investors to consider ADSM as their investment destination. ADSM has developed a good reputation and is well positioned in the region, where we succeeded in a relatively short period of time to attract a good percentage of foreign investors forming around 40% of all registered investors. Official statistics show the net foreign investment during the last ten months of 2007 to about Dhs6.6bn."

Mr. Healy concluded, "The political stability in UAE, the Government progressive agenda to diversify and liberalize the economy, the anticipated huge projects amounting in Abu Dhabi alone to more than $175bn planned for the next five years are major drivers for the growth and development of the capital market."