Speak to bank chiefs in Dubai and they often tell you the Arab Spring has had little impact on the oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. So, they say, there is no danger to their Middle Eastern business (which is probably focused, as most international banks are, on the GCC).
However, the Arab Spring has been so remarkable because it has already spread so quickly and so widely. Arab-language satellite television channels based in the Gulf helped communicate the message of the protests across the region.
Given that their domestic economies are usually tiny, Gulf-based business groups view the Middle East and North Africa as their home market. So Gulf investors are all exposed to the recent economic shocks in Egypt, Syria or Libya.
Meanwhile, fear of state breakdown in Saudi Arabia has already had a huge impact on business opportunities for banks in the region’s biggest economy. The Saudi government’s new spending programme has attracted a big inflow of deposits to local banks, as well as a newly invigorated project-finance pipeline, and increased mortgage-lending possibilities.
Violent confrontation in Bahrain, on the other hand, definitively ends the country’s claim to be the region’s main financial centre.