Abu Dhabi: Shaikh Ahmad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Managing Director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia) and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Zayed Foundation for Charity and Humanitarian Works, is missing after a glider plane crashed into a lake in Morocco.
The pilot was rescued in good condition, but the search for Shaikh Ahmad is
continuing.
Shaikh Ahmad, listed on No. 27 on Forbes list of the world's most powerful people last year, said in a rare interview in January that the wealth fund was refining its investment approach and might consider a larger investment than its rarely exceeded five per cent stakes.
"The rumours that circulate occasionally about Adia planning takeover bids or looking to buy controlling stakes in one company or another are invariably a case of mistaken identity," he said in the interview published in German business daily Handelsblatt.
Earlier this month, Adia released its first annual review and said it invests between 60 per cent and 85 per cent of its holdings in North America and Europe and between 25 per cent and 45 per cent in Asia and emerging markets.
Between 46 per cent and 65 per cent of Adia assets are held in developed equities, emerging market equities and, to a lesser extent, in small cap equities, it said.
Outlining the global economic situation, Shaikh Ahmad observed in the report: "World equity markets, already down by more than 40 per cent in dollar terms [in 2008], fell a further 23 per cent to their lows in March 2009," adding that "a significant recovery in economic activity and substantial gains in world equity markets" had taken place during the following months.
"Even so, considerable uncertainty remains about the outlook for 2010. Most pressing is the sustainability of the economic recovery," he said.
Established in 1976, Adia's rate of return averaged an annual eight percent over the past 30 years and 6.5 per cent per annum during the past 20 years, the report said.
On March 17, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued an Emiri decree restructuring the board of Adia.
