On October 12, 1946, an international bank opened a small branch beside Dubai Creek. It was the first bank ever in Dubai. It was the result of a meeting between Frank Johnson, a manager of the Imperial Bank, with the late Sheikh Saeed Bin Maktoum Al Maktoum and his son, the late Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum. Johnson found rulers who already saw Dubai as a place the world would come to trade.
Eighty years on, that bank is HSBC Bank Middle East and the town it served is one of the world’s great centres of trade and finance.
The partnership in Dubai began with infrastructure. In 1954, the bank worked to help raise the loan for dredging the Creek, the project that opened the city to larger vessels and set the pattern for the port-led growth that followed. As the Emirates grew, so did our presence: Sharjah in 1953, Abu Dhabi in 1959, and in time branches serving customers across the UAE.
The credit for HSBC’s journey belongs to the UAE: to the vision of its leaders and the enterprise of its people. Our part has been to be a steady partner at every stage, and to connect the country’s ambitions to the rest of the world.
Each era has brought new expectations of what a bank should do. In 1984, we introduced the UAE’s first operational ATM. In 1990, we opened the first branch in Jebel Ali’s new banking complex, supporting the free zone that became a model for the region. Between 2004 and 2016, we advised on 10 of the independent water and power projects in Abu Dhabi, which helped to build the utilities that serve a growing population.
In 2016, we moved our place of incorporation and regional head office to the Dubai International Financial Centre. We have launched green mortgages, committed billions in lending to help UAE companies expand internationally, worked with the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on the region’s first digital bond and opened our first wealth centre in the Middle East at our flagship Jumeirah branch.
Across multiple sustainability partnerships, we have helped financial education programmes for young people and disadvantaged communities, we have supported initiatives for women returning to work and financed mangrove protection and restoration across the UAE’s coastline.
None of this happens without people. Generations of Emirati bankers began their careers with us and now lead across the country’s financial sector and beyond. Today, several of our senior executives, including the HSBC UAE CEO and me, as Chairman, are proud Emiratis in this journey. The exchange also runs both ways: many of HSBC’s senior leaders around the world, including our current Group CEO, spent their formative years in the UAE, learning what it means to bank a country that moves at this pace.
Anniversaries call on us to reflect on the past but in an organisation, with a culture and environment such as HSBC UAE, we look forward. What does a business need to do today to still be trading in 2106? We are asking ourselves, and our clients, that question as we mark this milestone.
For 80 years we have answered it consistently: stay open, invest ahead of need and build connections with the world. Today, the country sits at the centre of corridors linking Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas and its capital increasingly shapes markets far beyond its borders. Our role is to keep those corridors strong. That means helping UAE businesses grow internationally, bringing international capital to national priorities, and supporting the next generation of Emirati entrepreneurs and families as they build wealth that lasts.
In 1946, visionary leaders and a banker reached an agreement built on trust. That trust is still the foundation of everything we do. We are grateful to the UAE’s leadership, to our customers and to our colleagues past and present.
We look forward to the next 80 years together.
The writer is the Chairman of HSBC Bank Middle East
- In association with HSBC Bank Middle East