The merger of Mubadala Development Company and International Petroleum Company (Ipic) is set to be concluded in “a matter of weeks,” Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak said on Thursday in Abu Dhabi.

“We’re in the final stages of the merger. It’s a first quarter event,” he said.

The two companies, which have combined assets of $130 billion (Dh477 billion), with Ipic and Mubadala having $65 billion each, are involved in what Al Mubarak described as “the largest merger in the history of the UAE, in terms of the size of the company we’re creating”.

Al Khaldoon referred to another merger that is currently underway involving Mubadala, describing the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) and First Gulf Bank (FGB) merger as still in its infancy, but expressed “high confidence” in the deal being “a very, very successful merger”.

The Mubadala chief said that in the coming years, he expected the new bank to not only be a large entity in the country, but on a continent level and even globally

Shareholders of the two banks approved the merger in December 2015.

Difficult to predict

“Mubadala has such global exposure round the world, so any changes that happen impact us. There’s a lot of elections and uncertainty coming this year. So 2017 is like 2016, difficult to predict,” he said.

Following the merger of Mubadala and Ipic, Al Khaldoon said that the new company will be “more interested in the upstream production side than the exploration side of oil,” whilst he anticipated the oil price staying between $50 and $60 a barrel.

After the merger, the fund will have a considerable stake in the midstream and downstream segment.

Al Khaldoon though refused to confirm reports from last week that Mubadala was preparing to invest up to $15 billion in SoftBank’s technology fund.

“We have a great deal of respect for Masayoshi Son (the founder and CEO of Japan’s SoftBank). He has a fantastic track record and you can see his history of successes in telecommunications and technology,” he said. “As we pivot from our traditional investments, we will of course look for the right partners.

source : gulfnews