Thursby Says NBAD’s Global Ambitions Intact

And the board – bearing in mind Abu Dhabi Investment Council, a UAE sovereign wealth vehicle, is the dominant 70% shareholder – feels the same way? “If you look at what was said in our statement for Q3, the board sees the great virtue in what we’re doing. They feel at the board level that there is a need for diversification for the long term for this bank.” Specifically, NBAD chairman Nasser Alsowaidi – also a member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council and chairman of the Energy Authority – said: “We are confident that the bank has the right long-term strategy in place, and we are confident that our management team will successfully execute against this strategy.”

Speaking in November, Thursby is also able to point to clear evidence of the expansion strategy continuing, as at the start of the month the bank opened a branch in Mumbai, which is intended to be one of the bank’s main international hubs. “We’re not looking to develop a huge bank there, but we are hoping to bank the best Indian corporations, both in India and more importantly outside India,” he says. “There is a lot of UAE business there.” India is the UAE’s biggest trading partner and many UAE behemoths are there already: Dubai World through the Indian assets of its P&O acquisition, and Emaar and Emirates too.

India represents NBAD’s 18^th country of operations, and fits into the second of Thursby’s three pillars he talks about for strategic development (pillar one: improve retail and commercial in UAE and then Gulf. Pillar two: build wholesale and wealth network business across nine locations, Mumbai among them. Pillar three: build five new international franchises in the West-East corridor).

Thursby does admit that the third of these pillars – which had a five-year timeframe when first announced in 2013 – might be pushed back a bit. “What I will say is that, in this new world, we are slowing pillar two and three a little bit because there is so much to do around continuing our technology spend and modernising the spine of the bank, and it is fair to say our domestic market will be a bit tougher for the next few years with depressed oil prices.

“We have realised that trying to build five [new franchises] in five years, on top of pillar one and two which are going at a pretty fast pace, is maybe… we’re going to take our time on pillar three.”

Still, it’s not dead in the water – he says “it will take us seven or eight years to get it to the level where we want it” – and he points to Egypt as an example of the strategy in action. When Euromoney first tries to reach Thursby, that’s where he is, celebrating the bank’s 40^th year of operations there and seeking to modernise the business.

Thursby also says the precise new franchise markets were never formally named and remain under consideration, though they could include Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia or Malaysia alongside Egypt. “We said at the outset we would select them as we went along with the process.”

Despite whispers that Thursby might leave when his contract ends, he insists he’ll be around. “I heard a rumour I was going to go and run Standard Chartered,” he says. “I could not think of a thing more distant from my thinking than to go and do that.”

“If you work for a western bank, full stop, you are at a troubled place. There’s a reason for that. They’ve got their models wrong.”