Our survey suggests Gulf bankers are an optimistic bunch.

Just when we accuse you of being a cynical bunch, financial services workers in the Gulf emerge as among the most optimistic in the world.

The results of eFinancial Careers.com‘s survey are in, and amid the global doom and gloom surrounding the credit markets an overwhelmingly positive sentiment has emerged from the Gulf region.

The survey took in responses from 18,000 financial services workers worldwide, 1,000 of them in the Gulf. A total of 70% of respondents from the GCC region expect 2008 to be better for business than 2007 – a year that has already seen significant strides made.

Globally, only 41.7% of respondents predicted 2008 to be better than this year.

But it seems bumper bonuses aren’t yet on the agenda in the GCC. As many as 33.4% of you got nothing last year, and among those that did, 23.3% got less than $10k.

Relatively low bonuses in the GCC may be one reason why you’re expecting this year’s payouts to be higher. In total, 49.5% of respondents to our poll are expecting 2007′s bonuses to be higher than 2006. Only 6.6% are expecting them to be lower, and an opaque global outlook has left 43.9% uncertain.

One over-riding trend that emerged was that banking in the Gulf is a man’s world. Concerns have been raised about the difficulty women face getting into banking and the fact that a whopping 88% of respondents to our survey were male suggests this is not without reason.