Varenne Capital Partners has opened a new office in Dubai International Financial Centre, establishing Varenne Capital Ltd as a wholly owned UAE subsidiary regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority. The Paris-based firm, which manages long equity, short equity, merger arbitrage and tail-risk hedging strategies, said the move marks the first step in a dedicated Gulf growth strategy after two decades of European development.
Giacomo de Nardis, a senior associate with more than 15 years at the firm, has been appointed Senior Executive Officer and Director of the new entity. Giuseppe Perrone, co-founder and President of Varenne Capital Partners, said de Nardis’s deep involvement in the firm’s investment process made him the natural choice to lead the regional presence.
Why DIFC
Varenne’s choice of DIFC as its regulatory domicile is consistent with the approach taken by most internationally regulated asset managers entering the Gulf. The centre operates under an independent legal and regulatory framework, enforced by the DFSA, that is modelled closely on FCA principles and widely recognised by institutional counterparties in Europe and North America. For a Paris-based firm already regulated by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers and registered with the SEC as an Exempt Reporting Adviser, DFSA authorisation provides the cleanest bridge to regional distribution without requiring a separate onshore UAE licence.
DIFC currently hosts more than 500 wealth and asset management firms, including around 100 hedge funds, alongside 290 banks and capital markets entities. That density creates both competitive pressure and a ready pool of institutional relationships. Salmaan Jaffery, chief business development officer at the DIFC Authority, said Varenne’s decision to establish in the centre underscored its reputation as the leading destination for internationally regulated financial firms.
Market context and regulatory backdrop
The timing sits inside a broader wave of European and US asset managers formalising Gulf presences as regional sovereign wealth and family-office capital deepens. Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority has been pushing its own hub ambitions through the Financial Sector Development Programme, creating a degree of inter-emirate competition for fund registrations. DIFC’s response has been to emphasise regulatory credibility and infrastructure depth, including a commercial court system and, increasingly, regulated pathways for AI and fintech-adjacent financial services.
For Varenne specifically, the Gulf move follows a pattern visible across the European mid-cap asset management universe: firms with strong long-term track records but limited distribution outside their home market are using DIFC or ADGM as a base to access MEASA institutional allocators without the cost of building a full onshore operation. The DFSA’s passporting arrangements with a number of regional regulators add commercial logic to the structural case.
The firm did not disclose assets under management for the new entity, target client categories in the region, or a timeline for the first regulated activity under the DFSA licence.
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