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Shayne Nelson, Group CEO at Emirates NBD |
There is a museum on the 15th floor of Emirates NBD’s head office in Dubai. Renowned for its extraordinary, priceless collection of pearls, once the lifeblood of Dubai’s economy and the main reason for the city’s very existence, the museum also chronicles the financial history of the city and its currencies through the years.
But the most important artefact is wholly unassuming: two creased and slightly smudged pages of A4 lined paper with handwritten Arabic in blue ink, signed in the presence of Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in his Zabeel Palace in March 2007, after lunch and a spot of tea.
It’s the document that created Emirates NBD, the merger of National Bank of Dubai and Emirates Bank that Sheikh Mohammed hoped would create a muscular national leader. “His vision was for Dubai to grow, and to be financed it needed a bigger bank with more capital,” says Ibrahim Sowaidan, head of group corporate affairs, and a proud guide to the museum.
But the deal suffered from dismally unfortunate timing.
