Dubai

Dubai built its financial centre rather than inheriting one. The emirate carved the DIFC out of its own territory in 2004, gave it English-derived common law, its own courts and its own regulator, and held it apart from the federal civil law system that governs everything around it.

That separation is the point. A manager inside the zone works under one financial regulator and a legal system international investors already recognise, which is what draws capital from the Gulf, South Asia and Africa into structures they can read. Onshore Dubai is a different regime, federal rather than emirate, so both authorities appear below.