Although now out of the limelight, and a little less spendthrift since Dubai’s 2009 crash and the subsequent Abu Dhabi bailout packages, the UAE has also been a prominent brand-focused sovereign wealth investor in the West, and especially in Britain and the US. Dubai’s various investment vehicles have, for example, purchased the Carlton Tower and Lowndes hotels in central London along with a fashionable art deco hotel in Manhattan,[370] and more conspicuously, the London Eye and the Madame Tussauds waxworks,[371] which were acquired in 2006 by Dubai International Capital. In 2007 Dubai’s Nakheel even purchased the decommissioned iconic British cruise liner the QE2 for about $100 million, planning to convert it into a floating hotel.[372] Most successful, in terms of branding, has been Dubai’s Emirates airline’s $150 million fifteen year naming rights for London’s Arsenal Football Club’s new stadium, which was opened in 2006 in parallel with an eight year Emirates shirt sponsorship deal for the club.[373] Now simply referred to as the ‘Emirates Stadium’, the Emirates logo is emblazoned on the side of the building and has become a key London landmark.
Abu Dhabi’s iconic investments in the West are now also numerous, with the Abu Dhabi Investment Company having paid a reported $800 million just before the beginning of the 2008 credit crunch for the famous Chrysler Building in New York — a staple of Hollywood movie Manhattan panorama shots.[374] Equally conspicuous, in 2005 the crown prince’s Mubadala Development Company purchased a 5 per cent stake, worth $130 million, in Italy’s celebrated Ferrari car manufacturer.[375] Significantly, this was followed up by Mubadala’s sponsoring of the Ferrari Formula One team which involved the Mubadala logo appearing prominently on the nosecones of Ferrari F1 cars.[376] Soccer, too, has been a priority for Abu Dhabi, exemplified by the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment’s purchase of Manchester City Football Club for about $360 million in summer 2008.[377] Led by one of the crown prince’s younger brothers (and a deputy prime minister of the UAE), Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the group quickly installed one of the crown prince’s right hand men (who also serves as the chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Executive Affairs Authority) as the club’s new chairman. Mirroring Emirates’ naming of the Arsenal stadium, Abu Dhabi’s airline — Etihad Airways — has now paid $642 million for naming rights for Manchester City’s stadium, which was originally built to host the Commonwealth Games in 2002. The club’s former chief executive officer[378] described it as ‘one of the most important arrangements in the history of world football’.[379] Today, Abu Dhabi’s association with Manchester City is widely reported and discussed in the British newspapers, with its chairman being a frequent subject of articles in the sports supplements.
The other Gulf monarchies have also made high profile purchases in the West, although due to greater caution or more limited resources they have tended to capture less attention. Kuwait’s Investment Dar, for example, currently owns 51 per cent of Britain’s Aston Martin luxury car company[380]—a brand normally associated with James Bond and other British action movies. Even Bahrain has been active, despite more modest sovereign wealth investment capabilities, with the state-backed Mumtalakat Holding Company taking a 30 per cent stake in Britain’s McLaren Group in 2007—manufacturer of the McLaren supercar and owner of the multiple F1 championship-winning McLaren Formula One team.[381] In 2011 Mumtalakat increased its stake to 50 per cent, perhaps explaining McLaren’s initial reluctance to boycott the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix following the first wave of protests in the kingdom, as discussed later in the book.
The Gulf monarchies’ hosting of increasingly high profile international sports events can also be considered a component of this strategy, as although these are not directly connected to investments in Western companies and are also intended to contribute to economic diversification (namely supporting nascent tourism industries) in the region, they nonetheless make a strong contribution to the international sports industry and help boost awareness of the Gulf monarchies among primarily western audiences. Alongside Bahrain, Abu Dhabi also hosts an annual Formula One Grand Prix, while Dubai hosts an ATP tennis tournament and European PGA golf tournament, among numerous other events. Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup is now by far the strongest example. Having defeated bids from several other countries, including the US and Japan, Qatar has committed to massive spending in order to create the necessary infrastructure for the event, including at least twelve brand new, world class stadiums. It has been estimated that the total cost will be around $211 billion, with $163 billion being spent on the stadiums and $47 billion being spent on transport infrastructure. Thus a decade looms of lucrative contracts for construction companies and sports-related industries, with Qatar likely to keep winning soccerrelated headlines in Western and other international newspapers for years to come. Meanwhile Qatar is also intending to bid for both the 2017 World Athletics Championships and the 2020 Olympic Games.[382]
Offering further evidence of the Gulf monarchies’ soft power strategy has been the increasing number of explicit gifts and donations to institutions and organisations in the West. In some senses, even though these involve wealth transfers from developing countries to developed countries, they can be viewed as a form of development assistance. Unsurprisingly, Qatar has been particularly active in this regard with its ambassador to the US visiting New Orleans in 2006 and pledging $100 million to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. When asked to explain, the ambassador stated that this ‘wasn’t about improving Qatar’s image in the US… or about public diplomacy’. Nevertheless, Qatar’s gift was one of the largest foreign grants in the wake of Katrina, with one prominent Louisiana observer predicting that ‘the [Qatari] ambassador would be met with lots of questions and praise for his country’s benevolence when he comes to the region’.[383] But even more directly underlining the emirate’s soft power strategy, when Qatar’s prime minister was thanked by a US dignitary for the gift, he reportedly replied that ‘We might have our own Katrina one day’,[384] clearly hinting at Qatar’s vulnerability and potential need for US protection. Another recent example of Qatari development assistance to the West is its setting up of a $50 million fund in 2011 to help young entrepreneurs in Paris’ impoverished and predominantly immigrant North African suburbs or banlieues. Described as ‘part of a broadening effort by the small country to expand its international presence through investment and diplomacy’ the gift is likely to be well received by the French government, which has been accused of abandoning these restive, high unemployment, districts.[385]