Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan was the ruler of Abu Dhabi for more than 30 years. He was the founding father and the principal driving force behind the formation of the United Arab Emirates, uniting seven emirates, and becoming the Union's first Raʾīs, a post which he held for a period of almost 33 years.
In 1976 he founded the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which grew to be the world's third-largest sovereign investment fund by 2020, with nearly a trillion US dollars' worth of assets under management. He is popularly referred to in the UAE as the Father of the Nation.