Foreign investors made up 50% of the total trading activity on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) by the end of 2024, representing 85% of all investors registered with the exchange, according to HSBC.
Dubai’s capital markets are gaining international traction, furthering the city’s ambition to become one of the world’s top four financial hubs.
The DFM delivered better returns than the broader MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index, with an annualised return of 4.9% in US dollars, compared to 2.8% for the broader EM index.
Furthermore, the number of wealth and asset managers operating in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) increased by 16% year-on-year to 410. This figure includes 75 hedge funds, of which 48 manage more than $1 billion, according to HSBC’s report.
Dubai accounted for 2.2% of global initial public offering (IPO) volumes and hosted the world’s largest tech IPO in 2024 for Talabat, a grocery and retail delivery platform.
“IPOs are experiencing strong, often record-breaking demand, and its leading status in debt capital markets is offering an expanding range of issuers the opportunity to raise funds in both foreign and local currencies,” said Samer Deghaili, Co-Head of Investment Banking for the Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye at HSBC.
Chinese companies are increasingly drawn to Dubai, with over $22 billion in debt listed on the exchange by the end of 2024. The value of outstanding sukuk listed on Nasdaq Dubai and the DFM reached $97.8 billion last year.
According to the report, sukuk issuance across all currencies grew by 42% year-on-year to $4.71 billion in Q1 2025, representing 76% of all debt capital market activity on Nasdaq Dubai.
HSBC has facilitated 65% of the total IPO deal value in the UAE’s financial markets between 2022 and 2025 to date. In 2024, the bank served as a Joint Global Coordinator for two of DFM’s three IPOs and helped introduce a stabilisation mechanism as part of Parkin’s privatisation.
