eFinancialCareers

Our (anonymous) woman in Dubai says the temperature of hiring in the desert city is going from hot to boiling.

Dubai’s frenetic growth is shown in all sorts of statistics – GDP, trade, etc. But anecdotal evidence can be more revealing.

No less than three Dubai tycoons are in the top six of a new list of ‘The world’s most influential Arabs’ in Arabian Business magazine. Not bad for a city of 1.5 million in an Arab world hundreds of millions strong.

The businessmen (Mohammed Alabbar, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Sultan Bin Sulayem) deal in property, airlines and ports. What they and others have in common is a bottomless need for bankers to finance their extraordinary ambitions.

Banks, foreign and local, are queuing up to help. These titans need a loan, want to issue a bond, or a sukuk (the popular Islamic version of a bond ie, no interest). Perhaps they want to merge, or demerge, or float on the DIFX – Dubai’s shiny new international stock exchange, which is ready and waiting for its first really big share listing.

The banks are salivating. But which ones will win the spoils? Deutsche Bank, with dozens of staff in Dubai’s purpose-built international financial centre, is among the most active, not just in Dubai but across the region, and it’s gung-ho about hiring. (Maybe a tad too much. One insider says, “In my sector, they’ve built a great team. Now they’re trying to find something for them to do.”)

Merrill Lynch is also there and increasingly active. And Goldman Sachs, historically absent from the Middle East altogether, has started hiring for the new office it plans to open in the financial centre soon.

Even HSBC, around for decades in the region and seen by some as a bit a sleepy, reported record profits in the Middle East in 2006. Niall Booker, its Middle East CEO, is moving to the US to help sort out the bank’s bad loan mess there. It remains to be seen how Youssef Nasr, his replacement, will position the bank in the region.

Regional banks have been staffing up too. Dubai-based Shuaa Capital and Mashreqbank say they have plenty of ambitious plans to expand in the UAE and other Arab countries and, in Mashreq’s case, maybe to buy a bank in the Indian sub-continent. Regional private equity firms such as Dubai-based Abraaj Capital have also been hiring.

Though the regional houses tend to be dominated by regional bankers, they increasingly compete with the big Western investment banks to hire staff with international experience – sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

The usual job-hopping that goes on in any international financial centre is going on in Dubai, too; with the difference that Dubai is still so small that everyone knows everyone else, so the rumour mills work overtime.

And with such a small talent pool in Dubai, some people are offered jobs they wouldn’t have a cat’s chance of getting in New York or London, or even Hong Kong.

Who cares if they’re qualified? They’re here, and that’s what counts.