UAE to invest £10bn in priority UK industries

The UK Office for Investment (OfI) and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company, have signed an agreement at Downing Street to significantly expand the UAE-UK Sovereign Investment Partnership (UAE-UK SIP), a framework for investment announced in March 2021.

Over the next five years, the UAE-UK SIP will drive a significant increase in investment across a further three sectors: technology, infrastructure, and energy transition, as well as build on the existing programme of life sciences investment.

As part of today’s agreement the UAE has committed £10bn via the UAE-UK SIP, overseen by the OfI and Mubadala, one of the world’s leading sovereign investors. This builds on Mubadala’s £800m commitment and the UK Government’s £200m to UK life sciences when the partnership was established in March.

From today, the UAE-UK SIP will become the central investment platform under the new Partnership for the Future bilateral framework, which was also agreed today at a meeting between UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Mubadala Managing Director and Group CEO commented: “Today’s expansion of our Sovereign Investment Partnership will help accelerate funding and innovation in key sectors that are foundational to economic growth of both nations. It is a testament to the UK’s innovation economy that we are ahead of target with the UAE-UK SIP life sciences programme, which we announced in March of this year. We are already developing ambitious energy transition, technology and infrastructure investment programmes that create new jobs and strengthen commercial ties between our nations.”

The United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates share an important trade and investment relationship, with total trade of £18.6bn in 2019, and two-way investment of £13.4bn in 2019.