Speaker 1: As CEO of the Abu Dhabi based Mudabola investment company Caldoon.
Speaker 1: Al Mubarak is part of a new effort by the
Speaker 1: UAE government to diversify its economy beyond oil. Born in
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi as the son of the UAE ambassador to France,
Speaker 1: al Mubarak was educated at Tufts, where he graduated with
Speaker 1: a degree in economics and finance. Now he's back in
Speaker 1: the UAE, overseeing a sovereign wealth fund with more than
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty billion dollars in assets and a goal
Speaker 1: to find new investment opportunities in a lower oil world.
Speaker 1: Al Mubarak recently sat down with Carlisle Group co founder
Speaker 1: David Rubinstein. They spoke on David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television program
Speaker 1: Peer to Peer Conversations. Let's talk about something that you're
Speaker 1: very passionately interested in, which is football. You led a
Speaker 1: group that bought a team in the Premier League in
Speaker 1: England called Manchester City, which just won the Premier League.
Speaker 1: It was a great journey. You know, football is a
Speaker 1: is a passion of mine. I enjoy football, so doing
Speaker 1: that job was an absolute, absolute joy. So ten years
Speaker 1: ago we started this journey. UM. Manchester City was modest
Speaker 1: club back then in terms of their standing within the
Speaker 1: Premier League. UM. They had revenues of about eighty million dollars.
Speaker 1: Ten years on we've pushed the revenue to almost five million.
Speaker 1: The group is very successful financially economically, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: when you're in the business of sports, you have to
Speaker 1: be successful on the pitch. And over the last seven years, UM,
Speaker 1: because it took us three years to build the capability
Speaker 1: and the club to be competitive, over the last seven years,
Speaker 1: Manchester City has been the most successful club in the
Speaker 1: Premier League. We've won the Premier League three times in
Speaker 1: those seven years. So do you go into the locker
Speaker 1: room and give them kind of win one for the
Speaker 1: Gipper kind of speeches or how do you inspire the troops? No?
Speaker 1: I inspire the troops by making sure we have the
Speaker 1: right organization in place. I mean, that's what I think
Speaker 1: I'm good at. Getting the right ecosystem to for success
Speaker 1: on the pitch, getting the right players. That's really what
Speaker 1: men wins in sports. It's that complete package. When they're practicing.
Speaker 1: Do you ever go down in the field and say,
Speaker 1: let me kick a couple of balls you know, I
Speaker 1: don't in order not to embarrass myself. What other teams
Speaker 1: do you have around the world. So we started with
Speaker 1: Manchester and then we came up with this idea of
Speaker 1: football is a global sport and it's a sport that's
Speaker 1: growing everywhere. How about we create a brand you know,
Speaker 1: are scouting the system, are our management systems, and use
Speaker 1: these synergies to be successful in multiple jurisdictions. Never been
Speaker 1: done before. It was a thesis. We didn't know who
Speaker 1: was going to work or not. But over the last
Speaker 1: uh you know, six to eight years, we've built a
Speaker 1: group called the City Football Group that owns UH controlling
Speaker 1: stakes or management stakes in clubs all around the world,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing the benefits of that by essentially having
Speaker 1: a much better proposition for sponsors who you know, want
Speaker 1: access to uh not just one market, but global market
Speaker 1: and want to have want to have that local presence
Speaker 1: through the football network that we have in these clubs.
Speaker 1: We're looking now at India, we're looking at China, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a reflection of you know, everything else
Speaker 1: that I'm doing. If you look at our portfolio and Mobada,
Speaker 1: it falls a very similar path as a global UH platform,
Speaker 1: our presences and all these markets and and that's how
Speaker 1: we've grown over the last fifteen sixteen years. Let me
Speaker 1: just ask you about the country that you're from. I
Speaker 1: should disclose that you and I have done investments together.
Speaker 1: You've invested in my firm, so we I've got to
Speaker 1: know you over quite a period of time. And um
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about Abu Dhabi, So let
Speaker 1: me give you a quick history lesson. The UA is
Speaker 1: a federation United Arab United Arab Emirates is a federation
Speaker 1: of seven emirates, seven states. I will let be being
Speaker 1: the largest, Dubai being one of the most famous. The
Speaker 1: federation was formed the nine The father of the nation
Speaker 1: is His Highness cherzad Uh. He passed away several years ago,
Speaker 1: but he was the father that he established the federation.
Speaker 1: We have a population of about ten million overall. We
Speaker 1: have a wealth of resources, particularly in the oil and
Speaker 1: gas field. That's been the foundation of the economic development.
Speaker 1: The oil and the gas is not going to be
Speaker 1: here for the next thousand years. It's finite and we
Speaker 1: have to prepare ourselves for the future. The leadership of
Speaker 1: this country has focused on maximizing the benefits and the
Speaker 1: returns from this resource, but at the same time build
Speaker 1: a diversification strategy, preparing ourselves for the future. And that's
Speaker 1: what you haven't in the UA today. Your economy now
Speaker 1: is dependent on oil? Is it fifty of your economy?
Speaker 1: So many years ago oil represented about seventy to of
Speaker 1: the GDP of the country. We've been able to move
Speaker 1: the economy where that concentration is now less than now.
Speaker 1: We're still a long way away, and I think the
Speaker 1: focus now is to continue to push that number down
Speaker 1: as much as possible. Why do you think to buy
Speaker 1: which is not as wealthy as a would abby is
Speaker 1: better known in some parts of the world. We have
Speaker 1: a radius around us of countries like India, countries like Egypt,
Speaker 1: countries with an immense history, and we were new into
Speaker 1: this market and we don't have a taj Mahal, and
Speaker 1: we don't have the pyramids, but we've What we've been
Speaker 1: able to do in Dubai particularly has been able to
Speaker 1: do was build a tourism infrastructure in terms of hotels, shopping, restaurants, entertainment,
Speaker 1: taking advantage of what we have, which is the sea
Speaker 1: and the desert, and by doing so, we've been able
Speaker 1: to build a an influx of tourists that supersedes Egypt
Speaker 1: and India combined. Well, let's talk about how you got
Speaker 1: there where you are. You grew up in Aberdabi? Is
Speaker 1: that right now you're not a member of the royal family.
Speaker 1: So right now, to be a member of the royal family,
Speaker 1: that means you're part of the family that helped to
Speaker 1: found the country. And the royal family now in Abu
Speaker 1: Dhabi has hundreds of members of comp hundreds of members. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're not a member of the royal family. My
Speaker 1: grandfather was essentially the first chief justice uh in the
Speaker 1: UI when the federation was established and uh and my
Speaker 1: father was an ambassador. So I come from you know,
Speaker 1: a family that you know has justice, has diplomacy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I was, you know, after my father passed away.
Speaker 1: I was brought up by my grandfather. So I at
Speaker 1: at a young age and your father passed away because
Speaker 1: of something that was tragic. Yes, he was assassinated in
Speaker 1: France where he while he was he was ambassable. He
Speaker 1: was supposed in from how old were you? I was
Speaker 1: six years old. So you are now living in Abu
Speaker 1: Dhabi when this occurs you later go to college in
Speaker 1: the United States. Had Tops in Medford, And how did
Speaker 1: you happen to pick Tops? First of all, I didn't
Speaker 1: even know where Toughs was. I had never been to Boston.
Speaker 1: I think I had been to the United States once.
Speaker 1: I'm yeah. Summer I graduated, I went West Coast and
Speaker 1: that was the first time I actually go to the
Speaker 1: West Coast. It's only then that I realized that I
Speaker 1: was deeply tricked by my friends and colleagues who convinced
Speaker 1: me to go to Boston. I love Boston, but the weather,
Speaker 1: you know from from a kid coming out of Abu Dhabi,
Speaker 1: where temperatures in the summer are north of a hundred
Speaker 1: degrees to go end up in Boston, that was a tough,
Speaker 1: tough transition for me. And I didn't know California. And
Speaker 1: when I went to California after I graduated, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I should have started in California when you've got the
Speaker 1: talks to people say where is Abu Dhabi your student friends?
Speaker 1: So I dealt with two things. Number One, nobody had
Speaker 1: any idea about Abu Dhabi the Uae. Second is the
Speaker 1: pronunciation of my name. I have a very difficult name,
Speaker 1: It's Kaldon and is the pronounce pronunciation of this letter
Speaker 1: in English is challenged by most of my friends in
Speaker 1: the United States. So I struggled with my name because
Speaker 1: people couldn't pronounce. So I became known not as Caldon,
Speaker 1: which is my name, but Caldon. Caldon is my let's say,
Speaker 1: my American name, so Caldoun, but you actually pronounced it
Speaker 1: call don. You can do that in Yiddish, but not
Speaker 1: so much in Yes. I found that also with my
Speaker 1: Yiddish friends. You come back after college and you looking
Speaker 1: for a job, and what did you do right after college?
Speaker 1: Back then? You come out of college, you go back
Speaker 1: to Abu Dhabi and uh, you're you know, a U
Speaker 1: S graduate, and you're gonna have really essentially two options.
Speaker 1: Either you're gonna work in oil and gas or you're
Speaker 1: gonna work in the investment field. So I interviewed with both.
Speaker 1: I had an offer from both um, and I decided
Speaker 1: to to start at the Nationalale Company, okay Um. I
Speaker 1: worked there for for a couple of years, and I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Abu Dhabi, but also
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Japan. Are not many
Speaker 1: people know that, but is one of the largest producers
Speaker 1: of crude oil in the world and our largest market
Speaker 1: is Japan. That was very very interesting for me and
Speaker 1: I learned a lot from that experience. From there on,
Speaker 1: I moved into the investment world. I started at a
Speaker 1: pipeline project, was the first um gas project that connects
Speaker 1: three countries in them in the Middle East UH and
Speaker 1: it needed a company to own it, so the government
Speaker 1: established a company and that company was Mubadala. So while
Speaker 1: I started with that project and evolved over the last
Speaker 1: twenty years to what it is today. So you were
Speaker 1: asked to to run m Bottla and Mubottla today it
Speaker 1: has assets of about two hundred and twenty billion dollars
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars, so you have grown it from a
Speaker 1: relatively modest company. Over the last three years, we've been,
Speaker 1: you know, evolving and expanding in different directions. And maybe
Speaker 1: four years ago I have told you less than two
Speaker 1: percent of our portfolio was in China, India and South America.
Speaker 1: We live, we had no presence in these countries. New exposure.
Speaker 1: Over the last three years we've been actively investing and
Speaker 1: UH President in China actively investing in President in India
Speaker 1: actively President President investing in South America. We've been opening
Speaker 1: offices around many places around the world where our operations
Speaker 1: have reached scale. The bottle is owned by the Government
Speaker 1: of Abu Dhabi, correct, So who do you report to? So?
Speaker 1: I have a board of directors. The Board of Directors
Speaker 1: UH is chaired by His Highness Shamed bin zaid Ayan,
Speaker 1: the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. UH. So we have
Speaker 1: a strong board, very present board. The board meets on
Speaker 1: a on a monthly basis. Now Saik Mohammed is the
Speaker 1: Crown Prince, but day to day he's in charge of
Speaker 1: running the operations of the government of Abu Dhabi. Is
Speaker 1: that fair to say? And it's fair to say you're
Speaker 1: very close to him. I've worked with him now for
Speaker 1: almost almost seven teen years, so I guess you're pretty close.
Speaker 1: So when he comes to let's say the United States
Speaker 1: and he meets with the President United States, UH, does
Speaker 1: he ask you to go with him? Sometimes? So have
Speaker 1: you met with President Trump? So? I've had the the
Speaker 1: pleasure and honor to meet h with pre President Clinton,
Speaker 1: President Bush, uh, President Obama and now President Trump. So
Speaker 1: you do this in other parts of the world as well.
Speaker 1: You've got to be the prime ministers when the shake
Speaker 1: Bahama goes Yes, So how much of your time is
Speaker 1: running day to day the Mobotle operation and how much
Speaker 1: is dealing with government related issues. So the best thing
Speaker 1: about my job, David is I'm actually don't I don't
Speaker 1: do anything. I have an organization that. One of the
Speaker 1: things I've tried to do throughout my career is always
Speaker 1: surround myself by talented, capable individuals. I've been lucky, I've
Speaker 1: hired well. I've built a very strong team in Mood.
Speaker 1: I have four top notch CEOs the report to me
Speaker 1: that essentially do everything. My ethos professionally has always been
Speaker 1: always try to hire the best, Always try to make
Speaker 1: sure that you have a strong stable of of talent
Speaker 1: around you. And that allows me to do so many things.
Speaker 1: Now I have a significant commitment of my time working
Speaker 1: obviously for His Highness um So I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time supporting His Highness and UH and traveling with
Speaker 1: him many places around the world. Would you ever go
Speaker 1: into the government full time? Or you're happy where you are?
Speaker 1: You know His Highness well, you've met him on many
Speaker 1: many occasions. He's a person that that I think working
Speaker 1: for him is is not a job. It's beyond that.
Speaker 1: It's beyond that. You you you know, I what I
Speaker 1: if he asked me to do, to do anything, I
Speaker 1: would do it. So I'm loyal to to my country,
Speaker 1: I'm lawyer to my government. But above all, I think
Speaker 1: just working with someone like like Shaik Mohammed, I think
Speaker 1: as a as an absolute joy and I would do
Speaker 1: anything more. And one of the things that the country
Speaker 1: has decided to do is to not make it a
Speaker 1: tour center necessarily, but bring more things into the country.
Speaker 1: One of is you have a Cleveland clinic, yes that
Speaker 1: you've opened that move Bottle has been involved with. Why
Speaker 1: didn't you decide to have a Cleveland clinic in Abu Dhabi?
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a funny story. Um about Yeah,
Speaker 1: about ten years ago, I was I was with His
Speaker 1: Highness with Shaike Mohammed and uh it was it was
Speaker 1: a month of Ramadan and we had he was visiting
Speaker 1: a family and he had the breaking of the fast
Speaker 1: at this family's house and one of the members of
Speaker 1: that family had just come back from being treated in
Speaker 1: Cleveland for for a long time and they had just
Speaker 1: come back cut a long story short after the after
Speaker 1: the meal, Uh shaik, Momma likes to take a walk
Speaker 1: always and and and many of our meetings are actually
Speaker 1: over long walks, which is, you know, a challenge when
Speaker 1: when you have to carry documents and and and particularly
Speaker 1: with our weather when it's very hot some days. It's
Speaker 1: believed me one of the hard parts of my job.
Speaker 1: So anyways, um, we took a walk and shake. Mohamed
Speaker 1: turned to me. It was night, It was maybe ten
Speaker 1: o'clock at night by at that point, and he said, this,
Speaker 1: gentleman just spent six months in Cleveland. We're one of
Speaker 1: the wealthiest countries in the world. We have a small population.
Speaker 1: We've invested well in terms of infrastructure. Why don't we
Speaker 1: have a hospital of the quality of Cleveland Clinic here
Speaker 1: in the UE. It's not acceptable. My people deserve uh
Speaker 1: this quality healthcare. And and I, you know, I want
Speaker 1: you to handle this project. Why don't you go figure
Speaker 1: out how you convey how you can build a Cleveland
Speaker 1: Clinic hospital here so you have that now. And that's
Speaker 1: what we did. He said to me. Listen, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want any bureaucracy on this. You're gonna report
Speaker 1: directly to me on this project, and I want it
Speaker 1: done now, and I want to done it done immediately. Um.
Speaker 1: And it took me. It took us to cost as
Speaker 1: an organization. It took us about seven years to go
Speaker 1: convinced Cleveland Clinic of the logic of this, convinced them
Speaker 1: that we would actually commit to the to the quality
Speaker 1: of the care and to the to the management that
Speaker 1: this requires to deliver exactly what you have in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: And abud w toocause seven years to build a state
Speaker 1: of the art hospital which we have today. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then that vision that he had, that dream he had,
Speaker 1: I think has been achieved. Let me ask him about
Speaker 1: another thing. You have opened up a museum that is
Speaker 1: the Louver. How is that working out? Well? First of all,
Speaker 1: I want to double check. Last time you came to
Speaker 1: my office and we met, you made a commitment that
Speaker 1: you visit it. Did you do it? I absolutely did,
Speaker 1: And I was astounded to see some of the works
Speaker 1: of art there here. I am an American and I
Speaker 1: go to Abu Dhabi and I see Whistler's mother. So
Speaker 1: a great American painted this and actually it was in
Speaker 1: the Loup. It's part of their collection. And now some
Speaker 1: people say that the most expensive work of art ever
Speaker 1: purchased is in that museum. Yes, it will be in
Speaker 1: that museum soon. Okay, this is a Davincia. This is
Speaker 1: Davincia that was purchased a few months ago. I guess
Speaker 1: roughly llion dollars. So that should be a pretty good attraction.
Speaker 1: You know, it's um it's a young country, it's a
Speaker 1: young nation. We didn't have a museum of this uh,
Speaker 1: of this magnitude in the u E. And I think this,
Speaker 1: this museum represents many things. Yes, it's it's beautiful. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that the art collections is remarkable, But I
Speaker 1: think there's a bigger story in this. We are trying
Speaker 1: to push out of the u E a message of tolerance.
Speaker 1: If you go to that museum, you will see that
Speaker 1: there is a curation. There's one particular Gelly that is
Speaker 1: for me incredible, in which you see the world religions
Speaker 1: really in one gallery and you see them next to
Speaker 1: each other. So there's there's a there's a there's a
Speaker 1: tora next to a Bible, next to a call from
Speaker 1: the same period, and you multiple literation of of different
Speaker 1: periods where you see the three books next to each other. Phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Now you can see that in a museum and in
Speaker 1: Germany or in or in the UK or here in
Speaker 1: the United States. But for a museum in the u
Speaker 1: A to have that, I think for people that are
Speaker 1: that don't know the Middle East, I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: massive step, a massive step and a massive a massive
Speaker 1: message that you will understand, David, and many people that
Speaker 1: know them at least will understand the significance of that. Now,
Speaker 1: another thing that you've done is bringing the Formula one races.
Speaker 1: Now you've built an elaborate Formula one course and I've
Speaker 1: been to the races. There's that working out is working
Speaker 1: out great. I mean the when when we say we
Speaker 1: need to attract, we've gone from from a country that
Speaker 1: was attracting a million tours a year to now over
Speaker 1: twenty million tours per year of a country that has
Speaker 1: a population of less than ten million. So over the
Speaker 1: years we've invested heavily in sporting activities and museums and hotels, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that's made the UE such an attractive place for tourism.
Speaker 1: But you know what's more important than all this safety
Speaker 1: and security in the neighborhood we're in, in the in
Speaker 1: the region we're in. To have a country like the
Speaker 1: UI attract that sort of a number of tourists, it
Speaker 1: can only be done by having a country that's safe
Speaker 1: and that's secure, and that people feel both safe and secure.
Speaker 1: In terms of the Middle East, Sheik Mohammed is very
Speaker 1: close to Shaikh Mohammed been Sman, who is the Crown
Speaker 1: Prince in Saudi Arabia. How do they develop this close relationship.
Speaker 1: You know, the Crown Princess Saudi Arabia, his Highness Hammad
Speaker 1: ben s is another incredible leader. I mean, what he's
Speaker 1: doing and what you're seeing in Saudi Araba right now
Speaker 1: is transformational. They share a view of the future. They
Speaker 1: share a vision of the future a better place, uh,
Speaker 1: not just for their people, but but for the region.
Speaker 1: And I think it's all these factors that make again,
Speaker 1: these two very special leaders very close together. President Trump
Speaker 1: has pulled out of the Iranian nuclear agreement. Did you
Speaker 1: support the agreement? You know, didn' David. It's not a
Speaker 1: big secret that we in the UI have always had
Speaker 1: reservations over that that agreement from the beginning. We live
Speaker 1: in our region, we live in our neighborhood. We've been
Speaker 1: dealing with UM with Iran and the the the challenges
Speaker 1: that it on UH puts on the region and the
Speaker 1: stability and security of the region. It's always been our
Speaker 1: position a concern over the UH what that agreement was
Speaker 1: able to achieve in terms of preventing it ON from
Speaker 1: building a military nuclear capability. How recently Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 1: u A, among others, have had a dispute with Cutter.
Speaker 1: Do you see any resolution and what is the basis
Speaker 1: of that dispute. The basis of the of this dispute
Speaker 1: is we live in all in a very challenging region.
Speaker 1: UH national security has been at the forefront of of
Speaker 1: of challenges that all countries in our region face, and
Speaker 1: the GC see as a as a block that has
Speaker 1: always tried to maintain at least a vision of how
Speaker 1: we see the future and the stability and security of
Speaker 1: that region. There has been a fundamental shift or disagreement
Speaker 1: in terms of how we see the future of this
Speaker 1: region and the direction that that has has decided to
Speaker 1: go through with its decisions in terms of both its politics,
Speaker 1: who it's decided to support, how it's UM really in
Speaker 1: our view not done what we had hoped it would
Speaker 1: do with regards to combating terrorism, combating the financing of terrorism, UH,
Speaker 1: and really sharing the vision that we have of what
Speaker 1: we feel all of us should have UH for the
Speaker 1: stability of our region. That's really at the heart of
Speaker 1: this dispute. UM. These issues are are quite deep, but
Speaker 1: these issues obviously are have been going on now for months.
Speaker 1: I hope that ultimately this this matter gets resolved, and
Speaker 1: I hope at the end of the day we're all uh.
Speaker 1: We're all one family. UH. You know UH autories in Monaiti, Saudis,
Speaker 1: Baharani Egyptian schooldays we are all one people. Some of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric coming out of the US government, has that
Speaker 1: been a concern to people in the Middlewest about Muslims
Speaker 1: or do you think it's political rhetoric and not something
Speaker 1: you worry about as much? No, I don't worry about that. No,
Speaker 1: we don't worry about that. I think we we have
Speaker 1: such strong links with the United States, and we have
Speaker 1: such strong links with the people here in the United States,
Speaker 1: with the government, with the business community, with the academic community,
Speaker 1: the think tanks, across all facets of US society. So
Speaker 1: I think these links are deep. You know, we have
Speaker 1: to be able to distinguish between rhetoric and and and
Speaker 1: reality and and and and that reality on the ground
Speaker 1: is what we feel. You know, I've been watching d
Speaker 1: C today. I'm i'm I'm meeting with politicians, I'm meeting
Speaker 1: with businessmen, I'm meeting with uh, you know, people from
Speaker 1: all facets, and I know I don't not feel it,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't worry. The final question I'd like to
Speaker 1: ask you about is, UH, is there anything that you'd
Speaker 1: rather be doing than you're doing that. I love what
Speaker 1: I do. I enjoy it both professionally and personally. But
Speaker 1: if there's one thing that I'd like to do more
Speaker 1: than what I'm doing right now, is spend more time
Speaker 1: with my family. And you have two children. I have
Speaker 1: three kids. So I have a lovely wife and three
Speaker 1: children that unfortunately, because of all what I'm doing, I
Speaker 1: don't spend enough time with. And that's that's that's my
Speaker 1: one regret. Okay, well, at least maybe they'll be gonna
Speaker 1: watch this interview and they can see you at some
Speaker 1: point on TV. Maybe a lot of giving me some credit,
Speaker 1: right maybe, so well, thank you very much. For taking
Speaker 1: time to do this. Thank you, my pleasure,