Hopes that the United Arab Emirates and Qatari stock markets would be upgraded to emerging market status by MSCI Inc suffered a blow on Tuesday after the index provider said it was to continue classifying them as frontier markets.

Local fund managers have been clamouring for years for an upgrade in the belief that it would attract more foreign institutional investment to the markets. But MSCI said in a statement that both the UAE and Qatar would have to move away from the frequent use of dual account structures, such as separate custody and trading accounts.

The transformation of Aabar Investments has been swift and spectacular.

It started life in 2005 as a small energy company, but over the past two years it sold its core oil and gas assets, was taken over by a government investment vehicle and has emerged as one of the more active of Abu Dhabi’s diverse stable of investment funds – notably hitting the headlines last year when it splashed out €1.95bn for a 9.1 per cent stake in Daimler.