It's Not Oil Money: Soling Partners on the Middle East's Evolving Allocator Landscape

In this episode of the Dakota Insights Interview Series, hosts Chris Leroy and Alex DeMarco sit down with Marius Vygantas and Richard Banks, founding partners of Soling Partners, a boutique advisory firm focused exclusively on the Middle East. Together, Marius and Richard bring over 50 years of combined experience in the region, and they walk through everything a fund manager needs to know before engaging the Gulf — from how to think about the allocator landscape to the patience and partnership required to succeed. Marius founded Soling in 2015 after a decade at Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, and three years with HH Mohammed bin Rashid's Executive Office in Dubai. Richard joined in 2016, bringing deep expertise in financial communications and business development across MENA built over 30 years. Today, Soling advises 15 clients managing roughly $4 trillion in assets and has helped facilitate approximately $1.92 billion in capital out of the region. The conversation opens with a framework that any manager approaching the Middle East should internalize: the four engagement quadrants. These range from passive sovereigns investing into fund structures, to tailoring sovereigns like ADIA, Mubadala, and QIA that actively shape their capital partnerships, to pensions and family offices seeking operational relationships, to regional aggregator platforms that syndicate capital from a long tail of families. Understanding which quadrant a prospective allocator sits in is essential before the first conversation. From there, Marius and Richard make clear that the entire region operates on two foundational principles: partnership and patience. The GCC is a verbal, consensus-driven culture where trust is built through sustained dialogue over time — not a transactional market where a pitch deck closes a deal. The baseline engagement arc is two years, with two to three in-person visits required just to establish a relationship. Managers who treat the region as a quick capital raise and disappear when results don't come immediately risk reputational damage that is hard to undo. On the current environment, Richard notes that recent geopolitical events have created near-term drag — allocators who came into the year bullish are now largely in a holding pattern through the summer. Soling's advice to clients is to stay close through relationship management and be ready to re-engage aggressively in the autumn. The disruption is tactical, not structural. The discussion also covers what separates managers who crack the GCC from those who don't. The answer, consistently, is platform-level engagement. Managers who present their full suite of capabilities and align those capabilities with the region's economic diversification priorities — rather than leading with a single product — are the ones building real, lasting partnerships. Blue Owl, Blackstone, Apollo, and Brookfield are all cited as firms that have done this well. Finally, Marius and Richard address co-investment and GP stakes, now expected across virtually the entire allocator spectrum, and break down the nuances of Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha, and Kuwait as distinct markets each requiring a tailored approach.