Abu Dhabi’s financial center is now home to crypto exchanges, tokenized stocks and a long list of global financial firms. Behind them sits one regulator, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority. Emmanuel Givanakis, CEO of ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority and its first employee more than a decade ago, explains what the regulator does day to day and which milestones he is most proud of this year. He also shares how ADGM compares with the world’s leading financial centers, why he sees regulators as collaborators rather than competitors, and what the agenda looks like for Abu Dhabi Finance Week.
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Inside the Regulator Behind Abu Dhabi’s Rise as a Global Financial Hub
What does the FSRA do, and what is your role day to day? You were also the first employee of the regulator.
That is just over 12 years ago now, and it has gone very quickly. Our day to day work is like most financial regulators. We license financial services activities within the center. We supervise the firms licensed to conduct those activities where necessary and appropriate. We take enforcement action against those entities and their management. We also do a lot of policy work, both internal and external facing, which drives our legislative reforms and enhancements to our quite comprehensive framework. We do a lot of regulatory cooperation with other regulators, building our international engagement and standing with regulators and standards setting bodies across the globe. And over the last seven or eight years we have done a lot of work on financial crime and cyber crime prevention, with a whole unit dedicated to that. We take our responsibilities seriously.
Looking back at 2026, what are the milestones you are most proud of?
One is the continued growth of the center. It has been quite surprising how we have maintained, particularly over the last five or six years, continuing growth of 20 to 30% year on year. I cannot give the exact assets under management number because that is confidential, but it is over a 50% increase. We have had a nearly 25% increase in the number of licensed entities we supervise, and it is diverse, from brokerage to crypto to many asset managers, both international and local. We now have nearly 280 funds managed from ADGM, particularly domestic funds, which is really pleasing. We have also done a lot on policy and legislative reform. We issued new funds legislation, trying to be a little more risk proportionate and risk based, especially with large institutional funds versus smaller funds. We have done more work on our digital asset framework, in particular around reference tokens, and we have come out with more legislation around staking. We also went through the UAE's FATF evaluation process this year. There are a lot of milestones we are very proud of, but ultimately, as a regulator, we need to make sure the markets are safe, transparent and stable.
How does the FSRA stand against the world's most important financial regulators?
I like to think we are not in competition with other regulators. I do not believe in competition among regulators. What we are very much about is cooperating and collaborating with other regulators and with the international standards setting bodies. Speaking on behalf of ADGM as an international financial center, though, it is competitive, and we have done exceptionally well. We have come from 11 years ago, when we had just established the center, to tracking around 12th to 13th on different international indexes, which is really pleasing.
What are you most excited about on the horizon into 2027?
As we come towards the end of 2026, I have to give a big shout out to Abu Dhabi Finance Week. It is our biggest event, and it is big not just for the whole ecosystem but for the regulatory body. We host a global regulators summit, bringing together regulators from around the world and the region. Previous topics have included AI, private credit and sustainable finance. This year it is all about tokenization, in particular the tokenization of securities and real world assets.