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Middle East – hardship posting or career kickstart?
19 February 2008
With the bloodbath in western markets, many bankers are being redeployed to the Gulf. Should they be holding their heads or grasping the nettle?
As all about them lose their head(counts) in the West, the Middle East seems a relative oasis of calm, bolstering its capital markets capabilities, rolling in wealth and bullishly expanding M&A activity.
And international banks seem to be scrambling to expand, particularly as they look eastwards to cushion the blows of the credit crisis. According to Financial News, investment banks are looking to ship bankers from Wall Street to the Dubai International Financial Centre.
As one banker joked: “It’s Mumbai, Dubai, Shanghai or goodbye.”
But whereas the prospect of going to the Gulf might have been the global equivalent of being sent to Coventry a few years ago, some might argue it’s now a real opportunity.
Banks and headhunters tell us of the relative ease of ascending the greasy career pole in the region, and there’s a lot of action to be had – with an estimated $2bn in debt and equity capital markets and advisory fees available to be captured this year.
But is the region really as buoyant as it seems? Does the exciting prospect of rolling out new projects merely mask the relative immaturity of the market? If you were a banker working in the US or the UK would you rather be out on you ear or begrudgingly take a Middle Eastern posting?
Your thoughts please….
I think it's a bit of a mixed bowl. No one can deny there is an economic boom in the Gulf, a phenomenal amount of liquidity to be invested, and Dubai clearly stands as a favourite to capture this opportunity.
However this doesn't mean that everything is as rosy as PR would like to depict it. Dubai pays well, but then inflation is at extremely high levels. Housing, in particular, is increasingly becoming an issue, even for mid and high income professionals. Quality of life: trafic, pollution, endless construction work, road safety, poor quality of service in general, etc., need to be adressed because they simply make Dubai a less attractive place to make business and live in.
expat 19 Feb 2008
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