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Carlos Obeid: Value Beyond Numbers

• Mubadala • Season 1 • Episode 3

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0:00 | 26:52

What does financial discipline look like when an institution scales from millions to hundreds of billions?

In this episode of The Exchange, Carlos Obeid, Chief Financial Officer at Mubadala, shares how financial strategy evolves alongside institutional growth, and how the role of a CFO extends far beyond reporting into shaping capital allocation, governance, and long-term resilience. 

Carlos explains why traditional planning frameworks often fall short in dynamic investment environments, and how agility, disciplined execution, and strong financial architecture become essential at scale. He reflects on Mubadala’s journey from a lean organization with a single mandate to a globally diversified sovereign investor, and the systems required to manage increasing complexity without losing clarity of purpose.

Drawing on his experience since Mubadala’s early days, Carlos discusses how to build financial structures that support long-term investing, enable strategic flexibility, and maintain accountability across a growing global portfolio.

From foundational decisions in the early years to navigating scale today, this conversation offers a practical perspective on embedding discipline, adaptability, and resilience into the core of an institution.

Episode Chapters:

(00:00) What does financial discipline look like at scale?

(00:34) Mubadala’s origins and rapid growth journey

(05:25) Scaling across sectors, geographies, and complexity

(10:37) Why traditional financial models fall short

(16:02) Building a global institution and partner of choice

(26:42) Reflections on resilience and the future

Listen to the full episode here:
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What does financial discipline look like at scale?

Carlos Obeid

And very quickly, that 50 million Dirhams that we started with became 300 million Dirhams.

Carlos Obeid

It became 2 billion Dirhams, then 10, then 50, then 100, and then 200. And you realize after that from a CFO perspective, that your traditional approach of having a plan with boundaries and constraints, if you want, does not really work in an environment like Mubadala.

Mubadala’s origins and rapid growth journey

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Welcome to the exchange. I'm your host, Mustafa Al-Rawi. I'm very happy to say that today with us is Mubadala's chief financial officer, Carlos Obeid. Carlos, welcome.

Carlos Obeid

Mustafa, great to be with you.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Carlos, you've been with Mubadala since the beginning of its inception and the way it's grown over the last 25 years or so. I'm very interested to hear from your perspective as the the chief financial officer. What has that journey been like for you?

Carlos Obeid

I mean, you're correct. I was with Mubadala from day one, and it was a great privilege to have been selected by uh our group CEO and the board to um you know uh be the chief financial officer at the time, but also be in charge of the other uh functions.

Carlos Obeid

You know, one thing to note at the beginning of Mubadala were just about 50 people. We had one project, which was the Dolphin project, that was meant to bring gas from the North Field in Qatar to the UAE via Subsea pipeline.

Carlos Obeid

So the task was really to build this uh this company, starting from uh from nothing. And it was very intense at the beginning because we had to do everything.

Carlos Obeid

Eventually we were thinking that maybe this company is going to be, you know, five to ten billion dollars and maybe 200 employees. So we're building essentially for uh for that. Now we all know where we are today, that's not exactly how uh things have panned out, but I think from the beginning you could see that there was this uh long-term vision that was there and the aim to become best in class.

Carlos Obeid

So I think that that gives an idea of how Mubadala has started, but also how it started with that uh with that uh activity.

Carlos Obeid

Now, when we started, we had 50 million dirhams and we had, as I said, uh one project, but very quickly we had these initiatives that uh we were working on in uh infrastructure, in healthcare, in uh real estate, in uh technology, in aerospace.

Carlos Obeid

So all of these were meant to be the champions in uh in the UAE. So we had to create these uh these companies, and we were essentially managing for uh for this to deliver on these projects, to make them happen, and to for these companies to be successful. So we had to look for the talent that uh that was able to deliver on these projects, and we didn't we needed to make sure that these were delivered on uh on time and on uh uh on budget, and to make sure that uh the expectations that were set were uh realized.

Carlos Obeid

And very quickly, that 50 million dirhams that we started with became 300 million dirhams, it became 2 billion dirhams, then 10, then 50, then 100, and then 200.

Carlos Obeid

And you realize after that from a let's say a CFO perspective, that your traditional approach of having a plan with boundaries and uh uh you know constraints, if you want, does not really work in an environment like Mubadala.

Carlos Obeid

So every plan that you put is meant to be overachieved, and every ambition that you have in a plan is meant to be uh outbound.

Carlos Obeid

So as a CFO you have to learn to be a lot more flexible than uh than you, but you need to retain the discipline around delivering that uh uh that ambition and that uh result that uh that you're expecting. This role is going to be a lot more complex. So the team that I had at the time will need to also embrace that change and that uh uh activity, and we'll need to make sure that whatever expectation is being set for the future is going to be uh uh to be met.

Carlos Obeid

We have now a lot more private equity in uh in uh in what we do, and therefore that change is going to be significant from overseeing just uh a few companies to one that actually has a bigger portfolio, more international, more uh diversified, and therefore a lot more demanding from uh uh from a financial uh perspective.

Scaling across sectors, geographies, and complexity

Carlos Obeid

So the 200 billion became close to 500 uh billion, and a year later in 2018, ADIC was added to the uh to the to the group, which made it even more complex because now all of a sudden you have multiple asset classes, you have different sectors, different geographies, different activities, a lot more complexities in uh uh in managing the overall financial uh uh situations and performance uh reporting.

Carlos Obeid

So a lot more demand on on the team from uh from the stakeholders, but also from internally the uh you know the asset managers and the investment managers.

Carlos Obeid

So we need to make sure that uh we have the ability to deliver on that and to accompany that growth in a in a fairly uh uh sustained uh manner.

Carlos Obeid

So building on the on the team that we had and building on the capabilities, the motto was you know, we deal with partners that are best in class, and we need to be best in class in everything that we do from day one.

Carlos Obeid

So that was how we uh we made sure that we are today, you know, $380 billion, 1.4 trillion uh Dirhams of asset under management.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Yeah, I mean you touch upon the bigger picture there, which is that you know the UAE and Abu Dhabi has been on this diversification journey um for the last few decades in particular, and and is is looking to future-proof um that economy so that future generations continue uh to enjoy the prosperity that that has existed since um you know at least the UAE was formed in in the early 1970s.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

But if if I I listen to to the journey that you've been describing there as the CFO of an ever-evolving institution, um, you know, most uh you know CFOs would come in and understand that business, maybe they've worked in that industry before.

Carlos Obeid

I don't uh I don't envy the analysts who will have to look at the Mubadala uh financials over time and try to make sense out of it for the reasons that I was just uh alluding to, in the sense that you know, when we started, we were a development company, and for us at the time and for every the the performance metrics were around how do you spend your capital efficiently? You know, are you on budget, on time? Do you have the management team that is capable of delivering these uh these projects on uh uh on target and uh in time to the specifications that uh that you want? And therefore, it's very different from uh uh, let's say the second stage, which is when we're more of an operating company where you're concerned about revenues, you're concerned about profitability, you're concerned about uh you know your costs, you're concerned about uh market growth, market access, the partners that you bring uh on board, and of course, how to attract talent, a management talent that can deliver on these, on the management of these projects. Some of these are really large, and you know, I've mentioned Dolphin, which is quite a significant uh project, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, uh, you know, Masdar, uh you know, the Imperial College Diabetes Center, Yahsat, the satellite uh company, Global Foundries, uh, uh Aldar and on the real estate side, all of these were initiatives that we started that are now global champions and or UAE champions for uh for that matter. Then when we became an investment company, the not the mandate, but the performance changes as well, or the performance metrics change as well, because now all of a sudden you're more of a private equity. So you look at it from a five-year horizon, you look at the returns, you say, Well, okay, uh, how do I recycle my uh my capital? So I need to watch my realization, I need to make sure that uh my investments match with my realization, I need to make sure that I'm compared to a particular uh reference uh performance metrics, and how am I doing against that? And then today, as a global uh organization with that has multiple asset classes that now manages also third-party capital, again, you have a totally different set of uh metrics because you know you not only are you looking at the five-year return, you're looking at the long-term return, the 10-year uh return. You're looking at uh your investors, how are they uh the ones that are investing with you, how are they performing? You know, some of these are uh pension funds, some of these are family offices. They are entrusted with capital that they have to deploy within specific risk return parameters, and you need to make sure that you are delivering to them what they expect in within the framework that they have. And they trust you with that with their capital, and you need essentially to deliver for that. So your metrics also need to take uh into consideration that particular uh aspect as well.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Um you you mentioned that the 2025 figures, uh, the annual results are are out. Um can you tell us a little bit more about what what's special about the 2025 results?

Why traditional financial models fall short

Carlos Obeid

Well, 2025 has been a record year across a number of uh of metrics. So we had the record returns. Uh as I mentioned, our five-year and 10-year uh returns are above our reference uh uh benchmark return by a significant uh percentage. So on the five-year we're 3.4% above the benchmark, and on the 10-year, we're close to 2% above the benchmark. So by all means, these are extremely uh uh good numbers. But also more importantly, I think we've had record deployments, so new investments, and we have record realizations almost in the range of 140 billion uh each. And just to put these things in perspective, if you take that amount and you say every business day in the year, that meant that we had 600 million dirhams coming into Mubadala and 600 million dirhams going out as an investments by Mubadala every single business day. So that's not a small uh uh small amount. We also grew our uh AUMs now to almost 1.4 trillion uh uh dirhams. Uh we have uh we have also a new category of uh assets under advisory as a result of the Mubadala capital acquisition of uh uh CI Financial, which is one of the largest uh uh registered independent uh independent advisors in the world. We have now close to two trillion Dirhams of assets under advisory. That's a new category for uh for us, and again, it demonstrates how Mubadala is evolving uh year on year.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

I mean, listening to the to the metrics from 2025, it's clear it was a a very strong year in terms of performance for Mubadala, but but equally on globally, uh 2025 sort of was in keeping with with more recent years in terms of you know uh predictability being much harder to come by, you know, uncertainty being a factor, and and and so when when it comes to to sort of a deteriorating picture globally, and and we can look back to some of the the crises and over the last 10 years, whether it be COVID or or you know oil price crashes um you know more than 10 years ago now, that have all been sort of cycles that Mubadala have been through. But when we look at 2025, you know, what tested Mubadala's financial architecture the most when it came to that sort of unpredictability?

Carlos Obeid

I think you know over time, you know, we have been through the crisis that you have uh uh described. And as a management team, I think, as a senior management team, as a leadership team of uh of Mubadala, we've had that experience uh uh built with us.

Carlos Obeid

So over time we have built the portfolio uh in a way that is able to sustain uh these shocks and is able to react fairly quickly and rapidly to events of uh of this nature. So obviously 2025 was a little bit uh uh volatile with you know uh the tariff situation that was introduced with the central banks uh uh you know uncertainty around their monetary policies, etc. So there have been quite a lot of volatility in in that uh trend.

Carlos Obeid

But from a mobile perspective, we are geared to address these uh uh these challenges. Uh we rely on each other in terms of how the reaction needs to be. We have the ability to access liquidity that we have built over uh over time.

Carlos Obeid

Our balance sheet is fairly strong when it comes to uh its construct and its leverage. Uh uh so we have access to a lot of uh uh financial facilities or liquidity facilities that allow us to deploy capital at a time where others may not be uh able to do uh to do so. And beyond that, I think, and what's the most important uh thing, I think in each of the assets that we have, we have a management team that has that resilience in their mindset.

Carlos Obeid

So we make sure that every entity is built with the same mindset, that they have at some point in time to face a you know market situation. And it may come for them at different times that it may come for for everyone.

Carlos Obeid

And having that diversified portfolio allows you to more or less navigate these uh circumstances and gives you the opportunity to invest in uh situations where you see there is upside from where it has uh where it has reached.

Carlos Obeid

So making sure that you have the team, making sure that you have the plans to address uh each one of those uh situations carefully and calmly, making sure that you know you have the robustness in every activity that uh that you carry out is the key to making sure that you exit from that crisis stronger than when you uh when you uh when you face it. And that's really what makes the difference between good companies and great companies.

Building a global institution and partner of choice

Mustafa Al-Rawi

And we're we're in a an another period of uncertainty in the region at the moment. Um and from what you're describing, uh if you have the building blocks in place for an institution like Mubadala, and you have the talent and you have the the vision and the leadership, then you're in a position to weather and and and evolve and adapt to any of these crises that that may come up.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

But from from your perspective as as a CFO, what what are the biggest factors that you have to contend with when it comes to these periods of uncertainty?

Carlos Obeid

I mean, it's it's a multitude of things, as I was saying. It's the ability to have access to liquidity, it's the ability to have a team of uh uh professionals that is dedicated and committed to realizing the uh you know the mission and the and the objective, is to have different scenarios that you have pre uh pre-programmed, if you want, uh, and plans associated with these scenarios that allow you to, when something happens, to react in a way that is predictable and that measures.

Carlos Obeid

It does not mean that everything goes to the letter in these plans, but at least you have the guidelines that allow you to to react and and respond in the best possible uh in the best possible manner. So all of that, and you have a team that is committed. I think I mentioned that, but I'll I can I don't know You can't say it enough.

Carlos Obeid

I can't say it enough, exactly, and and that's uh that's one of the the key. So and in that team you need to have the trust.

Carlos Obeid

So going back to this uh to the steering of the of the uh of the company overall, I mean just to uh to illustrate uh the fact last year or 2025, um we have raised about 33 billion dirhams in uh in various liquidity facilities and term loans and you know debt uh bonds, such various uh uh financial instruments that uh that we have.

Carlos Obeid

We have currently more than 40 banks with whom we deal with. These are relationship banks. Uh we have more than 90 investors in our third-party capital uh funds that have committed more than $20 billion uh with with Mubadala for uh for our various funds in the UAE, in uh in the US, in Brazil and and other places.

Carlos Obeid

So really that network and that that uh that has come as a result of that of building that trust with them over a long period of time. And that's why when something happens, we are their uh relationship or counterparty of choice.

Carlos Obeid

And you don't get there uh through transactional uh uh activity only. It's because you build the trust at the individual level, but also over a long period of time, institution to institution.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

And and sort of you know from from that perspective, uh being in the UAE, being in Abu Dhabi helps Mubadala because of the wider network and relationships and trust that the Abu Dhabi and the UAE has also built up over decades.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Um, and and that kind of mirrors what you're talking about. But but if if you also think about being based here in Abu Dhabi and the UAE during times of uncertainty, during you know, periods of crisis, global, regional, otherwise, there is always that feeling of trust that will emerge stronger.

Carlos Obeid

And we have seen that, I mean, Mustafa, you're 100% right. We have seen that across multiple crises where the leadership from the top conveys that message of, you know, you know, don't worry.

Carlos Obeid

You know, things are under control, we're prepared for for all of this, your well-being is being taken care of, you know, focus on delivering what you are meant to deliver, don't worry about uh other things. And this is the same principle that that we have at Mubadala.

Carlos Obeid

We have plans for all contingencies, and we want our assets also to have the same plans for contingencies so that employees or partners or uh clients or investors feel confident that we are able to manage these situations and you know their interests will be taken care of.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

It goes it goes back to that first story you told me about how Khaldoon Al Mubarak was insistent that things are done well with the right level of quality and the right investment, no shortcuts.

Carlos Obeid

No shortcuts.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

And and building that from the very beginning, that now, you know, fast forward two two decades on, then when you're big and you're you're global, you're still operating under the same the same philosophy.

Carlos Obeid

That's exactly true.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

And I think I'm gonna sort of change the pace a bit to to to looking down the line, um, you know, 10 years from now.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

You know, you you're looking back as as this as the CFO uh of Mubadala 10 years from today, and and what is it that you hope um will will remain, will still be there in in 10 years' time from from what what you're seeing now?

Carlos Obeid

I think it's a it's a big uh we're we're going through a big transformation, I would say, uh globally. And uh Khaldoon was uh mentioning uh uh earlier that in the past we used to project five to ten years.

Carlos Obeid

Now it's very difficult to see for the next three years where things are going to be because uh technology is transforming everything, AI is transforming everything. But I think one thing that will not change is that constant thinking about uh you know, how do we make sure that.

Carlos Obeid

Everything that we do has the resilience and has the ability to grow in the in the future. We'll continue to rely on the best quality people that uh that we have, and we need to make sure that we continue to outperform the market.

Carlos Obeid

Again, uh you know, we have great investments, we have great investment teams, and we need to make sure that we maintain that attractiveness uh for them, that they see a future uh for themselves in in Mubadala, that Mubadala has the ability to accompany this uh this growth because the ambition is here and it's not gonna be restricted.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Um you mentioned you know uh a period of transformation and you mentioned AI.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

And and so I'm curious to hear from your perspective, you know, how do you think AI should be used in terms of you know the finance function of an institution like Mubadala? At what point do you just give it over to AI and at what level do the humans need to be in charge?

Reflections on resilience and the future

Carlos Obeid

I mean it's a it's a great question, and I think uh it's something that we grapple with uh today, because it's undeniable that uh AI has the ability to process information and uh a lot faster and a lot quicker than uh what we currently uh what we currently have. Uh so its ability to ingest data and uh uh process them and give you insights in a summarized way are unparalleled. So you can't have uh an analyst, you know, a human analyst who can do uh that in that way. So definitely there are some activities that will that AI will augment that. Everything at the end of the day needs to be reviewed by uh by a human to test for uh I'm not gonna say um uh for reasonableness or for um more for for logic to a certain extent, and to teach it because at the end of the day, models work by looking at the past and uh and sometimes the main element of success in investment is not just the the numbers, it's the intuition of the investor, it's uh human touch that uh that comes behind it, and that you can't uh you can't replace. So AI will not be able to do that. So I think uh we as finance professionals need to also evolve into uh the the junction between a an analysis that is coming from a very clever and very capable uh uh AI tool, but mixing it with intuition, with uh know-how, with experience, with uh foresight that cannot all and with creativity as well. I mean I'll I'll just give a small example, you know. Uh you can have a company that has excellent uh financial metrics, but it fails. Why does it fail? Because maybe the CEO was not uh capable or got distracted or something like that. And these are things that AI cannot tell you about. You'll need to meet with the with the individuals, you need to meet with the people, you need to review these things and test for yourself whether these will uh will deliver these uh uh you know the plans that you have for them. They were built on what what I was uh mentioning, the talent and the cohesion and the trust that is not yet applicable by uh by machines. But definitely from processing capabilities, AI is going to be a big help in doing a lot of the things that today take us a lot of time. We'll be able to do that much faster. We'll be able to respond a lot faster to the uh we'll be able to scale faster. And we're already doing that uh uh internally, adopting all of these tools to allow us to respond very quickly to uh uh to our investment teams, to giving them the information that they need, the analytics that they need, and to be able to execute on a number of transactions in a very uh very seamless and quick manner. You'll still need uh individual, you still need that relationship that we're uh talking about, that partnership. And when you look at at Mubadala, that's one of the key elements that uh makes made it uh as successful as it is today and as uh uh renowned as it is today.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

Carlos Obeid, it's been a pleasure talking to you.

Carlos Obeid

My pleasure too.

Mustafa Al-Rawi

And thank you so much for being with us in The Exchange.