• Ferrari, a Fiat company, has formed a close association with Abu Dhabi, one of the wealthiest and most stable Gulf capitals. In 2002, during a dip in Fiat’s fortunes, Ferrari sold 34 percent of its shares to the bank Mediobanca, which in turn sold five percent of Ferrari for $114 million to Mubadala, a state-supported investment firm in Abu Dhabi. Over the past three years, Fiat has bought back both Mubadala and Mediobanca’s Ferrari shares, but the Abu Dhabi connection is maintained by the companies’ joint involvement in the Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit and the Ferrari World park. Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, Mubadala’s CEO, is a member of Ferrari’s board.
• In 2005, Mubadala took a 17-percent share of the fledgling Spyker sports-car business, which took over Saab Automobiles from General Motors five years later. This February, the Abu Dhabi investment in Spyker-Saab stood at 20 percent.
• In 2009, Aabar Investments, a stock fund owned by the Abu Dhabi government, invested $2.7 billion in Daimler. In connected deals, Aabar also took a 30-percent interest in Brawn GP, the world-champion Formula 1 team that was renamed Mercedes Grand Prix, and became a four-percent investor in electric carmaker Tesla Motors.
• Kuwait quickly bounced back from the instability caused by the Iraqi invasion in 1990. By 2007, its financial institutions were building a portfolio of luxury properties. Two of them, Investment Dar and Adeem Investment, paid $848 million to the Ford Motor Company for its stake in Aston Martin. Investment Dar also owns 40 percent of Prodrive, the British engineering specialist (run by David Richards, Aston Martin’s chairman) that builds Aston’s race cars and World Rally Championship Minis for BMW.
• KIA—the Kuwait Investment Authority, not the Korean car company—continues to have a stake in Daimler but has been overtaken by Abu Dhabi as its biggest shareholder; Aabar has 9.1 percent of the German company.
• Competition seems to be growing between the oil-rich states to become part of the auto industry. Bahrain, the tiny state that neighbors Qatar, likes to claim automotive leadership in the Middle East and is promoting its country as an ideal environment for research and development. Ruf, the German Porsche tuner, has set up a small manufacturing facility there.
