Last Updated January 06, 2009
Middle East banks weather the storm
The Middle East has been less severely affected by the global financial crisis because of many governments’ enormous reserves of petro-dollars. But banking systems have still been hit. Some banks have coped better than others.
For most of 2008, bankers in the Middle East were looking on the troubles of their western peers with a mixture of wonder and schadenfreude. The credit crunch still seemed a mainly western affair, that could actually strengthen the relative position of Middle East banks and lead to their international expansion.
