A New Platform for an Established Mission

The economic relationship between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates has never lacked ambition. What it has sometimes lacked is machinery, structured, ongoing platforms where investors, entrepreneurs, and officials from both countries can move from goodwill to actual transactions. It is against that backdrop that Asad Shamim has joined a newly formed UK–UAE investment forum, a platform dedicated to deepening bilateral investment flows and turning high-level ambition into working partnerships.

For those who have followed his career, the appointment is a natural progression. Since January 2022, he has served as Senior Advisor to HRH Sheikh Ahmad Bin Faisal Al Qassimi of the UAE, and his working life has increasingly centred on the corridor between British enterprise and Gulf capital.

Why Forums Matter More Than They Sound

It is easy to be cynical about investment forums. Business audiences have sat through enough panel discussions to know that conversation is not the same as capital deployment. But the well-run forums, the ones with committed principals, sector focus, and follow-through, perform a function that no amount of individual networking can replicate. They create repeated contact between the same decision-makers, and repeated contact is how trust is actually built between business cultures.

This is particularly true in the Gulf, where relationships precede transactions as a matter of custom, not preference. A British investor who appears once and asks for terms will wait a long time. One who shows up consistently, contributes visibly, and understands the rhythm of Gulf business will find doors opening. Asad Shamim has spent years on precisely that path, and a structured forum extends it: it allows him to open those same doors for others.

What He Brings to the Table

Three things distinguish his contribution. The first is operating credibility. As the founder of Furniture in Fashion, one of the UK's largest online furniture retailers, he understands British commerce from the warehouse floor upward, pricing, logistics, consumer behaviour, and the realities of scaling a business outside London. When he tells a Gulf investor what it takes to succeed in the UK market, he is speaking from experience rather than research.

The second is trusted access. His advisory role within a prominent Emirati royal circle, his chairmanship of the Advisory Board at OM International, and his consultancy with Marco Polo Resorts give him standing on the Gulf side of the table that few British business figures can match.

The third is range. Through his vice presidency of IFA7 for the UK and UAE, his philanthropic work with Insaaf 4U, and his long record of sports advocacy, he connects the commercial relationship to its cultural and human foundations, the dimension that ultimately determines whether bilateral ties deepen or stall.

The Forum's Working Agenda

The platform's focus falls on the areas where UK–UAE complementarity is strongest: real estate and hospitality investment, energy and infrastructure cooperation, technology and e-commerce partnerships, and support for small and medium enterprises seeking their first cross-border step. That last point matters to him personally. Large corporations can afford advisors in both capitals; it is the ambitious mid-sized firm, the kind of business he once built, that most needs a trusted route into a new market. Structuring that route is central to the advisory services he has developed over the past decade.

How Success Should Be Measured

Asad Shamim is clear-eyed about the standard the forum must hold itself to. Attendance figures and communiqués are the vanity metrics of bilateral platforms; the meaningful measures are different. How many introductions progressed to term sheets? How many first-time market entrants, British firms in the Emirates, Emirati investors in the UK, completed their first transaction with the forum's support? How many obstacles raised by members were actually taken up with the relevant authorities and resolved? These are unforgiving benchmarks, and deliberately so. Platforms that measure themselves honestly tend to earn the participation of serious principals, while those that celebrate activity rather than outcomes gradually empty of everyone but professional conference-goers. His intention is to help keep this one firmly in the first category.

A Signal Worth Reading

Beyond the individual appointment, the forum's creation is itself a signal. The UK and the UAE have spent recent years steadily upgrading their economic relationship, with sovereign investment flowing into British infrastructure and life sciences, and British expertise flowing into Gulf development projects. New institutional platforms are how that momentum becomes permanent, surviving political cycles, personnel changes, and market swings.

For Asad Shamim, the work now begins: convening the right people, championing the overlooked opportunities, and measuring success in completed partnerships rather than photographs. Announcements from the forum's activities will be shared through his news page as the programme develops, and enquiries about participation are welcome via his contact page.