Emirates NBD and BlackRock Add Two Retail Income Funds to Their Partnership
A CLO fund paying floating-rate income and a benchmark-agnostic portfolio targeting a 7% quarterly payout are now open to the bank's wealth and retail clients.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
Emirates NBD Asset Management and BlackRock have launched two income funds open to the bank's wealth and retail clients in the region. The pair arrives as the two firms mark a year of working together, a partnership that began in 2025 with private-market products aimed at professional investors and has now widened into public funds.
That first year drew USD 350 million in assets under management, according to the companies.
The CLO fund
The first product, the FundStar Emirates CLO AA Fund, is sub-managed by BlackRock and invests in collateralised loan obligations backed by senior secured loans to companies in the United States and Europe. It pays income at a floating rate and targets an average AA credit rating. The companies say nothing in the portfolio sits below investment grade.
Investors can move in and out daily, and the fund uses no leverage. BlackRock brings more than 24 years of CLO experience to the mandate and manages over USD 40 billion across CLO strategies.
The systematic fund
The second product, the Emirates Systematic Income and Growth Fund, does not track a benchmark. It holds income-paying assets from markets worldwide, and the portfolio is run by Emirates NBD Asset Management with BlackRock as investment adviser. The fund targets a 7% payout after fees, distributed quarterly.
The two vehicles sit at different points on the risk spectrum. One is a rated, floating-rate credit strategy with daily liquidity. The other is a flexible, unbenchmarked portfolio whose payout target is stated up front.
Michail Samawi, Senior Executive Officer at Emirates NBD Asset Management, said the funds are intended to widen access to global investments and to help clients build income-generating portfolios that match their long-term financial goals.
Keith Saldanha, Head of Wealth and Global Product Solutions for the Middle East and Africa at BlackRock, said CLO and systematic strategies have room in wealth portfolios, and that the two firms plan to keep developing products that broaden the options available to regional investors.
Why retail access matters
Income products built for institutional and professional buyers have typically been out of reach for individual investors in the Gulf, who have leaned on deposits, real estate and dividend equities for yield. Wrapping CLO exposure and a multi-asset income strategy into daily-dealt, publicly available funds changes who can buy them, and it gives the bank's relationship managers a shelf of products that does not depend on a single asset class. It also deepens a tie-up that started on the private-markets side, where the first USD 350 million was gathered, and now runs through the retail channel.
Both funds are available to Emirates NBD wealth and retail clients.
