David Forbes has quit as director of strategy at Abu Dhabi government fund International Petroleum Investment Company (Ipic).

Forbes, who had worked at Ipic for 14 years, resigned from the post in mid June, executives at his former office confirm. Ipic did not respond to requests to comment on Forbes’ departure.

He was seen as having been instrumental in a number of Ipic’s major investment decisions over the past decade and held a number of board member posts at companies in which the fund had major shareholdings.

These included Spain’s Cepsa, the local Aabar Investments and Gulf Energy Maritime (Gem), Seoul-headquartered Hyundai Oilbank Company and Zurich-headquartered Falcon Private Bank.

Forbes was only appointed to the role of strategy director in late 2009. Previous to this he was chief adviser to the managing director, Khadem Abdulla Al Qubaisi.

Before joining Ipic, Forbes worked at the US’ ConocoPhillips, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) and the Al-Khobar headquartered Arab Petroleum Investments Company (Apicorp). He holds a Masters degree in economics of natural resources.

Ipic was formed in 1984 to make strategic investments in the hydrocarbons sector. It currently manages an investment portfolio worth an estimated $14bn.