Nazem Alkudsi, CFA

Co-Founder

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates27 yrs 11 mos experience

Highly Stable

Key Highlights

40 years of experience in global capital markets.
Former CEO transforming investment strategies in the MENA region.
Founder of Long Arc News, analyzing market forces.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a seasoned investment strategist with expertise in sovereign wealth and geopolitical analysis.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Investment ManagementStrategic LeadershipCommunicationStrategic ThinkingBusiness StrategyLeadershipAsset AllocationProject ManagementFinancial AnalysisFinance

Other Skills

Financial AdvisoryConsultingStrategic PlanningFinancial MarketsBankingAnalytical SkillsConstructive FeedbackPrivate EquityTurn Around ManagementBoard LevelInternational Business DevelopmentFinancial ForecastingCorporate DevelopmentWorking with InvestorsBoard Development

About

History is patient. We are not. That tension — between the long arc of history and the impatience of the moment — shapes everything I write about. Before I became a writer, I spent 40 years inside the machinery of global capital. Nearly two decades at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority — managing portfolios from Silicon Valley during the dot-com era to Tokyo during Japan's lost decade. Then as CEO of Invest AD, deploying sovereign capital across the Middle East, North Africa, and frontier markets. The pattern I kept seeing: the most consequential forces shaping markets were never purely financial. They were cultural, political, spiritual — and almost no one in the room was talking about them. Long Arc News is where I write about what I spent four decades learning to see. Questions I keep returning to: Why do some institutions think in generations while others can barely see past the quarter? What do the forces shaping our world reveal about where power is shifting? How do belief systems — political, economic, spiritual — drive the behavior of nations? Subscribe: https://nazem.substack.com Read: https://www.longarcnews.com Follow on X: https://x.com/LongArcNews

Experience

27 yrs 11 mos

Total Experience

6 yrs 10 mos

Average Tenure

5 mos

Current Experience

Long arc news

Founder & Author; Long Arc News

Jan 2026 – Present · 5 mos

Long Arc News explores the forces that shape markets, institutions, and geopolitics over decades, not quarters — the fault lines between capital, power, and belief that most analysis ignores.
I write from the perspective of someone who spent 40 years on the inside: managing sovereign wealth portfolios across four continents, deploying capital across the Middle East, North Africa, and frontier markets, and navigating every major cycle from the dot-com crash to the post-pandemic rewiring of global trade. The newsletter is where I make sense of the patterns that endured through all of it.
For institutional investors, policymakers, and anyone who believes the most important questions are the ones most people aren't asking.
Recent coverage: AI infrastructure and water risk, sovereign capital flows into data centers, and what ancient institutions can teach modern allocators about thinking in generations.
Subscribe at nazem.substack.com | Follow on X: @LongArcNews

CommunicationInvestment ManagementFinancial AdvisoryStrategic LeadershipProject Management

Sterling heights corporate services provider

Chairman

Jan 2017 – Present · 9 yrs 5 mos · Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Independent advisory practice

Strategic Advisor

Oct 2016 – Jan 2026 · 9 yrs 3 mos · Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates · On-site

Since 2016, Nazem’s practice has: Provided strategic guidance across the world of finance and investment; Engaged in diplomacy and special situations across developed and emerging markets; Played non-executive board roles in complex and changing contexts; Offered advice to inter-faith initiatives; Helped to build consensus across markets and civil society.
Nazem combines a non-aligned philosophy with an on-the-ground approach to problem-solving to achieve satisfactory outcomes for his network of clients.

Business StrategyLeadershipConsultingStrategic Planning

Emirates international investment company (eiic)

Sr. Advisor

Jan 2015 – May 2016 · 1 yr 4 mos · Abu Dhabi

Asset AllocationProject ManagementStrategic Thinking

Invest ad - abu dhabi investment company

Chief Executive Officer

Aug 2008 – Dec 2014 · 6 yrs 4 mos · Abu Dhabi

Led Invest AD, the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, through a period of transformation — from a domestic holding company into an internationally competitive platform spanning asset management, private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and 45 subsidiaries and funds across the GCC, Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Oversaw landmark infrastructure and investment commitments across the region — including Jordan, Bahrain, and North Africa — while expanding the firm's frontier market reach through partnerships with institutions like Japan's SBI Holdings and joint research with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
This role shaped much of what I now write about at Long Arc News: how sovereign capital moves across borders, why frontier and emerging markets reward patience over models, and what happens when the forces driving investment decisions are cultural and political — not just financial.

Asset AllocationInvestment ManagementFinancial MarketsStrategic Leadership