The Sheikh Who Dominates One of the World’s Hottest Stock Markets

The United Arab Emirates’ rulers will soon achieve a ­distinction they’ve long coveted. Their once sleepy stock exchanges will be home to companies valued at $1 trillion. This outsize success—the markets already ranked No. 17 in the world at the end of March, ahead of Brazil and Spain—relies on the recent chart-topping performance of the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, run by the UAE’s biggest and wealthiest city-state.

But global investors tempted to pile in face the Abu Dhabi market’s defining feature. Royal family member Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan—one of Abu Dhabi’s two deputy rulers, national security adviser of the UAE and brother to its president—dominates just about every part of its business. As of March 31, the sheikh’s companies or those he oversees had a weighting of at least 65% of the benchmark FTSE ADX General Index.