For a person who has barely passed the fourth decade of life and is not a member of the ruling family in Abu Dhabi, the young technocrat has little influence over his counterparts, and this appears at first glance when his decorated office is privately seen with US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, but if I decided to expand to newspapers and websites, so you can easily find his name as a guest or host to a long list of leaders and former and current officials, business leaders, corporate tyrants and even professional athletes, starting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US Secretary of State John Kerry, and former Central Command chief David Petraeus, not the end of the famous coach "Pep Guardiola", and a large selection of professional football players.
As his photos and other miscellaneous memorabilia tell you in his office, it is difficult to limit the activity of "Khaldoun al-Mubarak" to a specific field. Besides his multiple images with leaders, politicians and diplomats, it is easy to see a microcosm of a distinctive Ferrari car, which indicates the working relationships that link him with The Italian sports car giant, and its great role in negotiating the deal that brought the Formula 1 races to Abu Dhabi, and on the other side of the walls of the same office, a number of paintings of European and Asian origins can be simply distinguished, bearing lined references to its deep ties outside the Gulf countries , Which extends from Britain in the heart of Europe, all the way to China, where he holds the position of his country's special envoy to Beijing, a new position created by the Emirates to take care of its growing interests in the Far East.
If you are a football fan, then you can easily catch that distinctive azure blue shirt for Manchester City, and through a quick search on Google, you will realize the secret of the special relationship that brings together the influential young Emirati and the prestigious English club, which he headed a year ago. 2008, and precisely from the moment the club’s ownership was transferred to Emirati Deputy Prime Minister Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan in a deal that sparked widespread controversy at the time, Khaldoun Al Mubarak was chosen to take over the club’s presidency, at a time when he was barely 30 years old.
At the time, the ruling family in the Emirates had amazed the world by spending more than 200 million pounds to buy the struggling club - which was founded by Anna Connell before the end of the nineteenth century in eastern Manchester to provide a breathing space for the unemployed away from drinking alcohol - from its former owner Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, but anxiety soon began to dominate the ruling class in Abu Dhabi due to the behavior of Suleiman Al Fahim, the Emirati businessman who brokered the deal, who was roaming the media to show off the deep pockets of his financiers, while living the life of "Play" "Boy" stereotypes, driving glowing sports cars, wandering with female artists and models, such as Pamela Anderson, the controversial Canadian model who took a photo with Al Fahim carrying both flags of the Emirates.
This was a sufficient reason to push the rulers of the emirate to try to change the narration and control the atmosphere associated with the deal, by removing Al Fahim from the picture and bringing in a new team to lead their new investment ship, and not surprisingly, their choice fell on Khaldoun Al Mubarak, the rising star in the pyramid of the Emirati authority at the time To add the tasks of managing the ancient English club to his growing portfolio of responsibilities and tasks that have included until now the presidency of the Executive Affairs Authority of the Abu Dhabi government, membership of the Emirate’s Executive Council headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed himself, and the chairmanship of the Mubadala Sovereign Fund for Development that manages the portfolio Financial worth tens of billions of dollars, membership of the Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development, chaired by the Board of Directors of the Abu Dhabi Media Zone Authority and Abu Dhabi Motorsports Company, not to mention the presidency of the Board of Directors of the Imperial College Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi.
The journey of the blessed did not stop there. During the following years, the young technocrats added many new job tasks to his professional portfolio, headed by membership of the New York University Board of Trustees, overseeing the implementation and rehabilitation of the prestigious university campus in Abu Dhabi, and chaired by the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, the authority The high-ranking official responsible for realizing the country's nuclear dreams, but what really matters is not the many job names that packed the immortal biography of Khaldun so much that he became dubbed "the man of everything", but the true, diverse and multiple roles of the young technocrats she describes Western circles today as the right arm of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and the key holder of the emirate’s oil-rich money coffers, the main mediator in many of its secret deals and projects, and above all, one of the most important bright interfaces that Abu Dhabi wishes to show to the world.
"Khaldoun Al Mubarak is the true prime minister of Abu Dhabi."
(Christopher Davidson, author of "Beyond the Senate ... The Next Fall of the Gulf Kingdoms")
Given the prevailing customs and traditions of the Gulf’s ruling circles, Khaldoun Al Mubarak has a story of ascension closer to traditional than to surprise and excitement, where the young technocrats belong to one of the prominent families who were always close to the layers of power in Abu Dhabi, beginning with his great-grandfather. Mubarak "who was an adviser to Sheikh" Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, also known as "Zayed the Great", and known as the great role in establishing the Emirati educational system because of his participation in establishing the first school in the Emirate of Dubai, and passing through his direct grandfather, "Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Hamad Mubarak, "the former judge and head of the Sharia department in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, and ending with his father, Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Mubarak, a prominent diplomat and former UAE ambassador to Sudan, Syria and France.
However, the early life of “Khaldoun Al Mubarak” was not without dramatic and moving turns, perhaps the most prominent of which is the assassination of his father during his work as ambassador to Abu Dhabi to Paris by the Palestinian Abu Nidal group in 1984 while he was still six years old, and since then Khaldoun Al-Saghir was enrolled in the American Community School in Abu Dhabi, where he graduated in 1993, and the Emirati authorities took care of the welfare and education of his family, where he traveled directly to the United States on a scholarship to obtain a BA in Economics and Finance from Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, before returning Again to the Emirates after completing his studies.
As an extension of the traditional traditions of passing power and inheriting positions through families in the Gulf kingdoms, the new generation of leaders often resort to the services of the sons of their fathers' advisors and take counselors for themselves, and this means that Khaldoun al-Mubarak assures himself of at least a high traditional position in one of the prestigious government bodies, but Apparently, his ambition was much greater than that. After a few years spent in the position of sales manager at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company "ADNOC", and in various intermediate positions in the Emirates Offset Group, the first big leap in Mubarak's career took place with his assumption The position of Executive Vice President of Dolphin Energy, as a reward for the prominent role he played in reaching an agreement to export Qatari gas to the UAE.
Since then, it is evident that Khaldoun Al Mubarak has succeeded in drawing the attention of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed and taking note of him, to the degree that pushed Ibn Zayed in 2002 to appoint him as CEO and managing director of the state-owned state investment company, Mubadala Development, which was At that time, she manages a $ 10 billion investment portfolio, at the heart of which is the Emirates International Aluminum Company in King Abdullah Economic City, one of the largest aluminum companies in the world, with a market value of more than $ 5 billion.
Until then, oil-rich Abu Dhabi, in contrast to its more famous neighbor Dubai, was very conservative in spreading its money and diversifying its investment portfolios globally, and was taking its first steps just towards getting out of the shadows, and apparently, the new Mubadala Fund led by Khaldoun Al Mubarak He was preparing to play the spearhead of the emirate's strategic investments, as the fund immediately started a journey to snip stocks and distribute investments to dozens of prestigious western companies, such as American technology giant General Electric, the Carlisle Financial Group, and Brazilian mining tycoon companies Ike Batista, whose financial empire subsequently collapsed in a way Drama lost 99% of his wealth before he ended up in prison.
Ironically, Mubadala was one of the few beneficiaries of the sudden collapse of the Batista Empire, as the Fund succeeded in acquiring a number of cheap assets that were owned by the Brazilian business tycoon including the Hotel Gloria Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, not to mention stakes in 4 major companies specializing in Mining and oil and coal production, and during the next few years, the Fund already had major investments in the sectors of aviation, agriculture, health care, aluminum, oil and gas production, water purification and computer chips, which tempted the UAE authorities to expand the fund's investment portfolio and give it greater roles in the country's economic vision, through Merging the Mubadala Development Company with the International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) under the umbrella of one holding company, Mubadala Investment, with Khaldoun Al Mubarak taking over the chairmanship of the new holding company.
The move raised Mubadala's financial portfolio to more than $ 125 billion, but in exchange, Khaldoun Al-Mubarak inherited the economic and political problems of APEC, led by its subsidiary Aabar in the famous embezzlement scandal of the Malaysian Wealth Development Fund (1MDB), Nevertheless, Khaldoun Al Mubarak was on the expected level of technical merit as demonstrated on more than one occasion, as the Mubadala Fund succeeded during the year following the merger (in 2018) in achieving a total income of 12.5 billion dirhams ($ 3.4 billion), an increase of 21% Within one year, against the backdrop of the Fund's sale of some of its more mature assets in order to save money in order to explore new investment sectors.
Thanks to the many successful investments of the fund, and the fact that the authorities in Abu Dhabi injected more funds consecutively into Mubadala, the size of the financial portfolio managed by the Khaldoun Al Mubarak Fund today is estimated at more than $ 230 billion, a huge balance that places Mubadala second in the list of sovereign funds In the UAE, behind the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the largest Arab sovereign fund and the third largest sovereign fund in the world, which is believed to have assets close to $ 600 billion.
In conjunction with the increase in his financial influence, Khaldoun al-Mubarak was gradually gaining more influence and favor within the political court, thanks to his tenure of membership of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council headed by Mohammed bin Zayed himself, as well as his chairmanship of the Emirate's Executive Affairs Authority, which is the most important advisory body in the country, His mission is to provide consultations and studies on government, economic, investment and even media and security issues to Muhammad bin Zayed himself, making Khaldoun Al Mubarak really the second man in the Emirate’s executive body behind the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, deservingly deserving of the description of “the unofficial prime minister of the UAE” , A description densely called in the business and media circles of the West.
Since the establishment of the Mubadala Sovereign Investment Fund in 2002, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed has been hoping that the fund - in addition to its official work as a tributary of economic diversification in the emirate - will serve as an informal arm to develop and diversify Emirati technological capabilities, and the conclusion of unconventional partnership contracts with key actors In the technology industry, which was evident in the Fund’s early investment portfolio, which focused significantly on stock purchases and acquisitions in high-tech companies, and not other companies in other sectors.
This focus was especially evident since 2005, when Mubadala signed a contract to purchase a 5% stake in the Italian Ferrari company, the famous producer of high-speed sports cars of the same name, making the UAE fund the first partner in the Italian group other than financial institutions. Subsequently, Mubadala purchased 8.1% of the shares of the famous AMD semiconductor and computer CPUs, a deal that enabled the fund that the Mubarak presided later to establish Global Foundries ", which in a short period of time became one of the most important semiconductor manufacturers in the world, with a huge portfolio of clients spanning from the United States to China.
However, with the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolutions in 2011, and the security craze that has afflicted the rulers of the UAE since then, Mohammed bin Zayed has begun shifting a large part of Mubadala’s focus and resources towards specifically harvesting and developing security and military technologies, by strengthening the role of a group of companies The Fund’s security and military personnel, such as Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) and SR-Technics, and even the advanced technology investment company (ATIC), are one of the most important Mubadala companies that were particularly responsible for major partnerships with Technology giants.
In a short period, Mubadala's defense companies have secured effective partnership contracts with many Western defense emperors, including the American General Electric and Raytheon, the French group Thals and Piaggio Aerospace Aerospace) Italian, and the European "Astrium" group specialized in aeronautics and other industries, so that the activity of the sovereign fund reached unconventional defense sectors such as military satellites and the field of information security and cyber spaces, after "Mubadala" succeeded in acquiring a company " Damballa, an emerging US anti-piracy operation, is a company that was chaired by Kenneth Minhan, former head of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Subsequently, Mubadala also funded the creation of the Yahsat satellite, in partnership with European companies Astrium and Thals Arena, and although Yahsat is primarily a commercial satellite, it is used by the government For Emirati security and military purposes pursuant to a signed contract between the company and the UAE Armed Forces whereby Yahsat provides a secure communications service for the purposes of the Emirati army for a period of 15 years.
This major shift in Mubadala’s interests and priorities meant, by extension, that Khaldoun Al Mubarak has also begun to play the major mediating role between Abu Dhabi and the defense sectors and companies in Western countries, and that his signature will become a gateway for these giant companies to cross the lucrative security contracts in the oil-rich emirate, A task that the young technocrats apparently performed brilliantly, which gained him more confidence and favor with Mohammed bin Zayed, who since 2014 launched a massive restructuring of the country's defense procurement sector in order for Mubarak to gain more influence in this area.
This restructuring was primarily aimed at overcoming the restrictions that the United States places on the ability of American companies to transfer defense technology to countries in the Middle East, by diversifying the portfolio of defense partnerships away from the hegemony of American companies and, apparently, the relationships developed by immortal men Mubarak in Mubadala for more than a decade was vital to achieving this goal, to the degree that convinced Mohamed bin Zayed to merge more than 20 Emirati companies working in the field of defense purchases, and is subject to the supervision of 3 different sovereign funds, under the umbrella of one company, Emirates Industries Company Defensive (EDIC), placing the company under the leadership of Hamid Abdullah Al-Shammari, a former colonel in the UAE Air Force, executive vice president of the Mubadala Fund, and the first assistant to Khaldoun Al Mubarak himself.
Other than that, the largest share of the new company (60%) was officially owned by Mubadala, which made Khaldoun Al Mubarak the first word in defense contracts in the country after Mohammed bin Zayed himself, and as a result, and over the following years, Mubarak and Al Shamri were keen to invest these New powers to achieve Ibn Zayed’s vision of diversifying the defense companies ’portfolio to avoid exposure to troublesome American conditions, especially end-user agreements that prevent the transfer of American equipment to any third party, by investing in many non-Western defense companies, led by“ Dunl ” (Denel) is a well-known company in South Africa, and the Chinese company "Chengdu", which produces "Wing Long" drones that the UAE army used today extensively in all regional theaters of conflict from Yemen to Libya, and even the subsidiary "Russian Helicopters". For the Russian arms giant Rostec, in which the UAE fund bought a minority stake in 2017.
And it seems that the success achieved by the UAE strategy in concentrating defense contracts in the hands of one side has enticed Ibn Zayed to focus all defense activities in a new huge bloc announced at the end of 2019 under the name "EDGE", and put it under the leadership of "Faisal Al Bannai" The founder of the electronic intelligence company "Dark Matter", who is close to Mohammed bin Zayed, provided that "EDGE" includes all UAE defense companies, including companies that were not included under the banner of "IDC" in 2014, and as the structure of the new company shows, it is clear Bin Zayed has finally decided to free Mubadala from the defense contracts file and put it under his personal supervision directly, in order to give more time and freedom to Mubadala, and for Khaldoun Al Mubarak himself to perform the most vital task for the ambitious young man, which is to improve Abu Dhabi's grim image in the West, and provide a brighter face The emirate in the world, and specifically in Britain and Europe.
"Khaldoun Al Mubarak is Abu Dhabi’s façade to the world ... He has a full mandate from the Crown Prince and can intervene whenever the need arises."
(New York Times)
Khaldoun Al Mubarak and Manchester City team love to talk about those 126 seconds difference in the team's march towards its first title in the English Premier League more than four decades ago, when the team players succeeded in reversing two goals to a goal in the last round of the 2012 league to win three Goals to two goals In the last moments, Man City grabbed the dear championship title from the traditional rival Manchester United.
For the English club fans, winning that tournament was like a football miracle. As for the owners and managers of the club, this was an indication that the policy of unlimited financial pumping began to bear fruit. For only three years and eight months, it was estimated that the owners of the club in Abu Abu Dhabi spent 1.1 billion pounds (about 1.4) billion dollars on their project, including the initial value of the club's purchase, the bill to bring in senior players and coaches, salary bills, infrastructure development payments, and others.
With football investment standards, this was an unprecedented spending spree that turned the sports community upside down, with successive accusations against Man City and his administration and the Abu Dhabi government of distorting the principles of fair sport competition by pumping money without an account, asserting that the oil-rich emirate continues to finance the club Unofficially, assuring that sponsorship contracts are only a secret means of ensuring the flow of Emirati money to the city of Manchester.
In normal circumstances, football investments often work according to a well-known and disciplined mechanism: players present successful and effective football and win tournaments, attracting an increasing audience to the team, and the number of views on the stadium, and more importantly on television, increases, and then the team gets high returns for broadcasting, cares Prospective sponsors of the club and sign contracts in exchange for advertising privileges. These funds are included in the club’s budget and are used to pay the salaries of players and employees, sign with new players, develop infrastructure, training facilities, and other aspects of spending.
In contrast, when the team fails to attract sufficient sponsorship contracts, it spends much more money than it yields and generates end-of-season losses that ultimately compels it to cut costs, but clubs like Manchester City do not simply work that way, at a time when the club owner is a businessman Prominent belongs to the ruling family in Abu Dhabi, and the club’s president is a prominent technocrat from the heart of the power circles who runs a sovereign portfolio with tens of billions of dollars, and the club’s sponsors are the same major state-owned companies in the oil-rich emirate, the business cycle becomes completely different.
In Man City, the club's needs and aspects of spending are determined first according to an open budget, and its hour naturally is that there will be no problem in paying 13.5 million pounds in one season (up to 16.75 million in the following season) in exchange for signing Pep Guardiola at a time when the Spanish coach The young man has just spent two months of his contract with Bayern Munich, and there will also be no problem in paying a few thousand to some public relations brokers in order to pressure to remove an article from the Sunday Mirror website. He talked about Guardiola's meeting with the ball manager in Man City in order to give the club the opportunity To control the date of the announcement of the deal at a time that suits him, of course there will be no problem in paying 75 million pounds for the services of Kevin de Bruyne from Wolfsburg, even if the club is associated with a company that earns tens of billions of dollars annually such as Volkswagen.
Later, club sponsorship contracts are set to cover expenses and redefine payments for Emirati sponsors such as Etihad Airways, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, and the Emirates Aabar and other sponsors, as these funds are transferred by the authorities in the Emirates, specifically the Abu Dhabi United Development Group And investment owned by Mansour bin Zayed, to these companies, and from them to the Man City treasures, in the end money and profits do not represent a problem in this case, where the main task remains to control and control the narrative, and presenting the Man City experience is not an example of the way in which oil money is spoiled. Mathematical practices, but as a model for efficient, modern management and the cultural and civilizational inspiration that the Gulf Emirate offers to the world.
This task - i.e. controlling the narration - is the biggest role that Khaldoun Al Mubarak and his comrades play in Manchester, behind the scenes of the ball, player contracts, tournaments and chants of stands, there is a real network of influence that works in secret to achieve the economic, media and even political goals of the Emirates, a network led by Khaldoun Al Mubarak who International newspapers have described him as leading a private lobby for the UAE in the country, accompanied by Australian Simon Pierce, Manchester City club director and member of the City Football Board, who is believed to play the role of link between the men of Abu Dhabi and the leadership of Manchester City and many prominent British figures.
In addition to his work at Man City, he is the Director of Strategic Communications at the Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority led by Khaldoun Al Mubarak himself, and previously worked for the controversial PR company Pearson Marsteller, who previously worked with many notorious clients Like the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and the famous mercenary company Blackwater, which led to the popularity of the famous quote: “When evil needs a public relations company, it can contact Pearson Marsteller.” It is worth noting here that the company itself has previously provided its services to the government of Abu Dhabi, which means that Simon Pearce's relationships and the nature of the role he plays goes far beyond the world of football, which is quite true of Khaldoun Al Mubarak himself.
Some of the key features of the two men's role appeared earlier in 2015, when press sources revealed that Khaldoun Al-Mubarak and Simon Pearce were using their influence to influence the decisions of the government of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, and pressuring them to surround the Muslim Brotherhood that the Abu Dhabi government believed was It benefits from the climate of freedom in Britain, to the point that Mubarak has warned the United Kingdom that his country will freeze billions of dollars in arms contracts and suspend intelligence cooperation between the two countries unless Cameron targets the Brotherhood.
Matters did not stop there, as Khaldoun Al-Mubarak tried to pressure Cameron to interfere in BBC coverage regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, in a demand described as unprecedented, and in order to persuade the British government to respond to British warnings, Simon Pierce suggested Abu Dhabi rulers should lure London by entering into lucrative arms contracts, granting BP oil concessions to Abu Dhabi, and boosting Emirati investments in Britain.
The same applies to the entire Man City project, which has today transformed from just an English club with the ability to win tournaments into the largest soccer empire in the world with an estimated market value of $ 4.8 billion, with offices in almost all continents working on marketing the private brand of the Emirates Improving the country's image, and at the back of this huge empire lies a huge media and political lobby pressing for the goals of the Emirates and taking care of its legitimate and legitimate political interests, led by the ingenuity of Khaldoun Al Mubarak with a personal mandate from Mohamed bin Zayed.
However, that less bright and shining face of Khaldoun Al Mubarak blends brilliantly behind the cheers of the raging fans in the stadium of the Union, and the fans' comments praising on social networking sites. For most of Man City fans, the Emirati youth is the best president that their club has enjoyed throughout its history, how no one who Mancini, Pep Guardiola, Robinho, Tevez, Aguero, De Bruyne and others, transformed their team from a club on the verge of bankruptcy into the largest global football empire and brought it back to the podium after 44 years of absence, it does not matter how that happened, or with any money, in the era of globalization nationalities and identities are stripped Under the feet of big companies, in the world of soccer capitalism, scenes of destruction are wiped out, and the sounds of bombing subside as soon as fans start to chant from the stands.