As war unsettles the Gulf, wealthy families reassess where to place capital and relocate

BEFORE the Iran war, the trend was clear. The United Arab Emirates had become one of the world’s most attractive destinations for mobile wealth, drawing capital from Europe, Russia, India, Africa and, increasingly, China.

The appeal is simple: zero personal income tax, a strong luxury property market, light regulatory friction and a jurisdiction designed to welcome foreign capital.

That matters because wealth rarely moves alone. It brings advisers, family offices and investment structures. For high-net-worth (HNW) individuals, the UAE offered an unusual mix of lifestyle, flexibility and security.

The data reflects this. Dubai’s residential property market surged as capital poured in. Over the same period, Singapore’s market rose more modestly, and Hong Kong’s declined.

Travel through the Gulf also surged. Emirates, once comparable in revenue to Singapore Airlines in 2008, grew to more than double that of its Singaporean counterpart’s by 2025.

Two decades ago, Dubai’s leaders openly said they wanted to model the city on Singapore. The parallels were real; both economies relied on services, tourism and foreign talent.

Since then, Dubai has gone further than many expected, extending its ambitions into technology.

In 2025, the UAE committed to a US$1.4 trillion investment framework with the US, aimed at bringing advanced technology home. Abu Dhabi made that push in April 2024, when Microsoft invested US$1.5 billion in G42, a technology group.

Seeking safe haven

The US-Israel conflict with Iran has interrupted that story. War, airspace disruption and prolonged instability have put geopolitical risk back at the centre of investors’ thinking.

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As a result, the UAE’s technology ambitions may slow. Its push into artificial intelligence and data centres depends on international confidence, safety for talent, and continued access to advanced American technology.

Investor confidence in the Gulf has been shaken, and wealthy individuals may have started considering alternative financial centres.

If founders and families decide that part of their capital, people or structures should sit outside the Gulf, Singapore and Hong Kong are the natural alternatives in Asia.

They may also look to Switzerland and other European cities for their strong private banking and legal systems.

However, these jurisdictions come with higher tax burdens, with maximum personal tax rates approaching 50 per cent, and average goods and services tax rates at around 20 per cent – alongside higher living costs and more burdensome labour and compliance regimes.

Before looking at that opportunity more closely, it is worth reviewing the factors that shape where HNW individuals choose to place capital and build operations.

Dubai has assembled a powerful formula for attracting wealth: low taxes, flexible residency, permissive hiring rules, accessible property markets, and ease of business formation.

Investors do not move money on fear alone. They compare jurisdictions on tax, residency, talent access, property rights and ease of doing business.

Implications for Singapore

The question is whether Singapore can use this window – likely no more than a couple of years – to attract the founders, families and capital now reassessing their Gulf exposure.

The Singapore government has done a commendable job over the past two decades in attracting multinationals and investment inflows, and refining the legal framework for family offices.

The Economic Development Board and its partner agencies have attracted marquee names in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, semiconductors, banking, finance and AI. Even so, there is still room to optimise the environment for private capital.

The most immediate beneficiary of any reallocation away from the Gulf would be Singapore’s private banking and wealth management industry. Singapore is now one of Asia’s leading wealth hubs. DBS, for instance, is the third-largest private bank in Asia outside China.

There is also a potential upside in the capital markets.

Over the past decade, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has lost ground to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), which has a market capitalisation now roughly eight times larger than that of SGX, up from about five times in 2009.

SGX has also had many privatisations, and numerous Singapore-headquartered companies have chosen to list elsewhere – 58 on HKEX and 80 on Nasdaq.

This erosion of the local bourse has a direct impact on the broader economy. Listings create spillover effects, in that listed companies tend to hire more people, generate high-value work for professional services, and use more banking services.

One possible reason for this lull has been Singapore’s regulatory regime, under which both the Singapore Exchange Regulation and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) play a role in the mainboard listing process. Because the two bodies review different aspects of the prospectus, the framework can feel layered, creating less clarity over timing and certainty.

This is further weighed down by the market view that SGX still lacks sufficient liquidity and capital-raising depth.

To counter this, MAS has rolled out new measures to support SGX, including the S$6.5 billion Equity Market Development Programme. It has also streamlined the mainboard listing process by reducing its role in reviewing listing prospectuses.

The scale of the programme remains modest relative to SGX’s market capitalisation of S$1.1 trillion. A deeper study may be needed to assess the nature and scale of pre-initial public offering and aftermarket funding in order to achieve meaningful impact.

Ultimately, however, investors do not choose exchanges; they choose companies, and companies choose exchanges. Although SGX has at times been overtaken by Thailand and Malaysia in capital raising, it remains well placed to serve as the main listing venue for South-east Asian companies and, potentially, South Asian issuers looking for a stable, transparent jurisdiction.

Founders and families moving to Singapore may still face friction. Family office incentives have been broadly effective, but their emphasis on local hiring can be a double-edged sword. This requires foreign staff to be paid at elevated levels to meet Employment Pass thresholds.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face similar difficulties in accessing foreign talent. The unintended effect is that more Singapore-based SMEs are outsourcing offshore to stay competitive. In 2025, business closures in Singapore reached an eight-year high.

On property, the government has imposed high stamp duties to protect affordability for citizens. Since the additional buyer’s stamp duty was raised to 60 per cent for foreigners in 2023, foreign residential investment has been sharply curtailed.

One option worth considering is whether designated areas such as Sentosa, Marina Bay or parts of the Greater Southern Waterfront could be opened to foreign investors on more favourable terms, as they are distinct from mainstream housing.

On the AI front, Singapore has committed more than S$1 billion to support compute, talent and industry development. The real challenge is whether Singapore can attract the entrepreneurs and talent needed to build world-class AI companies.

The current crisis in the Gulf may give Singapore a timely opening to strengthen its policies for attracting talent and capital – which could deepen its financial base, support growth and reinforce its ambition in technology and AI.

The writer is managing director of Titan Capital and partner of a healthcare private equity fund. He was formerly managing director of TPG Capital Asia, partner at Kearney, CEO of a South-east Asian conglomerate, and chairman and vice-chairman of two Nasdaq-listed companies.