U.S. financial icons Nasdaq and Carlyle Group are receiving strategic investments from the oil-rich Persian Gulf, the companies said Thursday.

The Nasdaq Stock Market, home to Microsoft, Google and scores of other technology luminaries, clinched its bid to acquire the European OMX exchanges by selling its stake in the London Stock Exchange to Borse Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. Under the agreement, Borse Dubai would also acquire a 20 share of Nasdaq.

Separately, Washington D.C.-based Carlyle Group, the second largest U.S. private equity group, said it agreed to sell a 7.5 percent stake to Mubadala Development, an investment unit of Abu Dhabi, an emirate bordering Dubai.

Mubadala would also contribute $500 million to a new Carlyle investment fund. The deal values Carlyle, which has broadly hinted that it eventually plans to follow the Blackstone Group in becoming a public company, at $20 billion.

Though neither deal gives the Persian Gulf partners significant ownership control, the transactions give the oil rich region a role in a financial marketplace that increasingly moves without regard to time zones or national borders.

Political concerns, however, could cast a shadow on the Nasdaq deal. At a news conference, President Bush said the administration would review “national security implications involved in the transaction."

Last year a deal to sell port-management businesses to state-owned Dubai Ports World was scuttled after a political outcry about putting key infrastructure in foreign hands. Dubai Ports World later sold the business to a U.S. company.

Under the multi-tiered Nasdaq deal:

Borse Dubai would proceed with its $4 billion bid for the Nordic OMX stock exchanges, but transfer ownership to rival bidder Nasdaq. The U.S. stock exchange would pay Borse Dubai $1.7 billion and give it a 19.9 percent stake in Nasdaq with voting rights capped at 5 percent.

Borse Dubai would also acquire from Nasdaq a 28 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange that had been acquired as part of an unsuccessful hostile takeover bid. Nadsaq would take a stake in the Dubai International Financial Exchange, which would adopt the Nasdaq’s technology and brand.

Meanwhile, Carlyle said it would sell a 7.5 percent stake to the government-owned Mubadala Development company at a 10 percent discount to the $20 billion valuation set by the parties.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System in 2000 bought a 5.5 percent stake in Carlyle, which has $76 billion under management.

In a New York conference in April, Carlyle co-founder Daniel D’Aniello acknowledged that the company was considering an IPO and the company has made little secret since of its interest in tapping public markets.

Though its leveraged buyout transactions are the company’s hallmark, Carlyle also has a venture capital arm that funds developing companies like education technology provider Blackboard, which went public, and anyday.com, which was sold to handset maker Palm.

Mubadala Development is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, one of the emirates within the United Arab Emirates.

In May, an investment arm of China announced it was taking a $3 billion stake in the Blackstone Group.