Comment by alephnerd
Not all Arab investors are bad - for example, funds associated with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (eg. ADIA, Mubadala) has been extremely successful in their investments explicitly because Tahnoon studied engineering in San Diego (and rolled at Gracie's gym) back in the day.
Additonally, for every failed investment like builder.ai a fund like QIA and MS Ventures has had multiple other successful investments.
The perception of "shadiness" in the London VC scene arises simply because a subset of non-American VC simply does not care about value investing and product-led growth.
Additonally, it's not like the UK doesn't have good VCs and Growth Equity investors - for example Index Ventures and Ballie Guiffold both have a solid track record.
Being overly congratulatory and being overly pessimistic about the UK scene does more harm than good.
LoL, the Mubadala and ADIA funds are the most corrupt of them all. There's obviously the stuff that happens over the table, but there's a shit ton that happens under the table. This doesn't translate into VC and the startup world directly, but indirectly as they follow a fund of funds model with VC investing, and those VC funds don't tend to do their due diligence.
I have yet to see one direct startup investment from Mubadala do well. Compare that to a regional fund like BECO or Wamda (both composed of ex founders).