eFinancialCareers

Three cheers for Lehman. By going bust, it may make a significant contribution to easing the chronic shortage of car parking spaces at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Not quite the epitaph Richard Fuld would have wanted, but a service to humanity just the same.

Fuld visited the DIFC last year and was greeted with the usual sycophancy that Western investment bankers have become accustomed to in these parts. A gushing welcome and breathless praise, indistinguishable from the treatment given to the previous bigwig and to the next one. Of course, as soon as Lehman filed for Chapter 11, Dubai's FSA rushed out a statement suspending the firm faster than you can say '“credit risk”.

The DIFC then came out with a touching promise of support for the 40 or so luckless bank staff. They won't be deported just because they have lost their jobs (sometimes people have just 30 days to leave the country) and the government might even pay their children's school fees. Not even the Fed has thought of that one. But while falling short of a multi-billion-dollar bail-out, this still looks like moral hazard. Why not bet another $100m on something you don't understand, if little Johnny will still get to learn his French subjunctives whether you lose the money or not?

Many Lehman staff may end up keeping their jobs, if parts of the bank internationally are rescued. So the improvement in the car park could only be temporary. It would be nice to think that Dubai might learn a permanent lesson from Lehman's collapse – that it shouldn't go all starry-eyed at the sight of every Western investment banker who jets into town. But it probably won't.