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Mohamed Al Zaabi is the Group CEO of Miral Group, the force behind one of the world’s most dramatic tourism transformations - turning an artificial island in Abu Dhabi into a global destination drawing tens of millions of visitors.

Under his leadership since the mid-2010s, Miral has overseen the creation, operation and evolution of immersive attractions, resorts, sports venues and digital experiences that have re-imagined what a destination can be in the 21st century.

Al Zaabi shares how he shaped strategy, consumer insight, global partnerships and execution to convert a “blank canvas” into a thriving tourism ecosystem, with plans that stretch well into the next decade.

In this episode we cover:

• Vision and context — How Al Zaabi scoped out the opportunity in the UAE’s tourism sector, adopting a customer-centric strategy that matched global leisure trends with diverse visitor needs and expectations.
• From concept to creation — The tactical challenges in developing Yas Island from nearly nothing into an entertainment and hospitality hub featuring marquee attractions like Ferrari World, Warner Bros. World, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi and more, designed to appeal to families and travellers from emerging and developed markets alike.
• Customer-led innovation — Why listening to real customer feedback (including early lessons from international market visits) drove Miral to build customizable online ticketing systems and create dedicated marketing/sales companies to better serve global travelers.
• Future growth and global partnerships — Al Zaabi details major upcoming initiatives, including expansions of existing parks (e.g., waterpark capacity increases), immersive experiences like TeamLab Phenomena, and landmark collaborations with global brands such as The Walt Disney Company to create a Disney theme park destination on Yas Island.
• Sustainability and legacy — How Miral is aligning with the UAE’s net-zero ambitions through renewable energy adoption, plastic reduction, and eco-friendly hospitality — and why the legacy Al Zaabi wants to leave is people-centred (leaders, teams, communities) rather than just built environments.
• Driving record visitation — Yas Island has emerged as a world-class tourism magnet with over 38 million visits in 2024, underscoring Miral’s impact on Abu Dhabi’s global leisure appeal.

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Nick Rohatyn is the founder and CEO of The Rohatyn Group, and one of the architects of emerging markets as a modern asset class. Having built JP Morgan’s emerging markets business from an eight-person desk into a 600-person global platform, Nick has spent more than four decades investing across cycles, crises, and continents. In this return episode, he reflects on why emerging markets may finally be entering a new phase after more than a decade of underperformance, and why dispersion, not beta, will define returns going forward.

In this episode we cover:

• (00:00:00) Nick’s journey into emerging markets
  From JP Morgan’s early derivatives desks and a formative stint in Tokyo to discovering emerging markets through Mexico’s debt restructuring and the Brady Plan, and why solving large systemic problems can be both profitable and meaningful.
• (00:08:40) The three phases of emerging markets as an asset class
  Strong outperformance from 2002–2011, a brutal 13-year underperformance driven by US exceptionalism, and why 2025 may mark the start of a new cycle as capital slowly diversifies away from the US.
• (00:14:59) Push and pull factors reshaping global capital flows
  How US political uncertainty, dollar dynamics, and eroding assumptions about American exceptionalism are pushing allocators outward, while policy shifts, trade realignment, and regional themes are beginning to pull capital into select emerging markets.
• (00:21:49) Why benchmarks fail and why multi-asset EM investing matters
  How MSCI and debt benchmarks distort exposure, why single-asset mandates perform poorly in emerging markets, and why the future lies in flexible, multi-asset strategies that move across equities, debt, currencies, and private markets.
• (00:34:48) Extreme dispersion as the defining opportunity
  Why countries like Korea and Turkey can diverge wildly in the same year, how geopolitics, interest rates, and underinvestment amplify volatility, and why skilled active managers can thrive in this environment.
• (00:25:32) Private credit, local capital, and development
  Why underpenetrated credit markets in Latin America and parts of Africa offer compelling opportunities, how domestic pension systems are becoming critical sources of capital, and why local-currency investing changes the game.
• (00:43:01) Doing well by doing good at scale
  Rohatyn Group’s work in sustainable forestry and agriculture, why real assets matter for climate and food security, and Nick’s advice to young professionals seeking careers that combine finance, impact, and global relevance.

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Bruce Talley is an American entrepreneur and frontier market strategist who has spent decades operating in opaque, rapidly changing environments from Russia’s Black Sea coast to Brazil and now Ukraine. He built the largest destination services company at the Sochi Olympics, navigated direct FSB scrutiny, and today is helping global investors access deeply discounted Ukrainian residential markets through the Ukraine Prime Property Fund. In this episode, Bruce shares hard earned lessons on operating in post Soviet systems, spotting opportunity in chaos, and why he believes Ukraine is one of the most compelling markets of the next decade.

In this episode we cover:

• (00:00:00) Bruce’s path from US capital markets to frontier markets
• (00:10:40) Life under the FSB and the moment he knew he had to leave Russia
• (00:22:48) Building Destination Sochi from zero to the largest Olympic services provider
• (00:26:52) Why he reoriented to Ukraine and the thesis behind the Ukraine Prime Property Fund
• (00:40:29) Kyiv as the next great European city and advice for young MBAs

Link to Ukraine Property Fund: www.ukraine-capital.com

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