GF
Sector: Equities
More and more brokerage firms are saying bye-bye to Dubai
Working for a brokerage firm in the Gulf has been something of a perilous affair for a couple of years now, but depressed trading volumes in the first quarter of 2011 have seen more firms shut up shop. There are now just 65 brokerages operating in the UAE, compared with 103 at the beginning of [...]
Bonfire of the brokerages
Now is not a good time to work as a broker in the GCC. Slumping trading volumes, which last year saw a number of firms collapse or make redundancies, have continued into 2010 and further closures are expected. The plight of Dubai’s brokerage houses was highlighted by Bloomberg, which suggested that a four-year low of [...]
Gulf banks reeling in equity researchers
The hiring spree for equity researchers within international banks in the Gulf may have tailed off towards the end of 2008, but as firms look to gain ground in new markets and sectors demand for analysts is taking off again. The likes of UBS and Deutsche Bank were actively building equity research teams in the [...]
Bad times for independent brokers
Many smaller brokerage firms in the UAE are being forced into lay offs, suspending their operations or shutting down altogether as things take a turn for the worse in the third quarter. It’s been a pretty grim year so far for the vast majority brokerage firms – just 13 of the 99 firms registered with [...]
International hiring freeze beginning to defrost?
It’s possibly a naïve point of view, bearing in mind recent cut-backs in the GCC, but it seems that there might still be some hiring opportunities within international banks in the region sometime soon. OK, so Jefferies closed its Dubai office, and the likes of Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have announced redundancies [...]
Dubai brokers braced for redundancy
Brokers at smaller firms in the UAE are bracing themselves for possible redundancy as last week’s stock market slump left some either facing bankruptcy or the prospect of being swallowed up by larger rivals. The Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) underlined the severity of last week’s stock market slide, saying that brokerages were required to [...]
IPO explosion fuels rising demand for ECM staff
Equity capital markets (ECM) has been teetering on the edge of exploding into action in the Middle East, but now it’s in full flow. ECM professionals are, therefore, increasingly becoming hot property. At least 120 initial public offerings (IPOs) are planned in the GCC through to 2010 as more and more firms turn to equity [...]
Banks’ localisation quotas revealed
The UAE banking sector has had no shortage of commentators singing its praises over Emiratisation. But are the local banks living up to the hype? While international banks like Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered have been singled out for their Emiratisation commitments, most of the multinational firms in the freezone of the Dubai International Finance [...]
Pay pain for banks in the GCC
Pay in the Middle East is spiralling. It now makes up almost 60% of banks’ operating costs. A survey by consultancy Hewitt Associates suggests salaries in Oman and Qatar lead the way when it comes to eating into banks’ profits. But pay across the Middle East banking sector is becoming a problem – particularly when [...]
Are Arabs from Venus and Westerners from Mars?
There’s no shortage of Western bankers in Dubai. But culturally, are Arabs and Westerners planets apart? Maybe – Kwintessential, a consultancy which specializes in such things, says Arabs tend to be more tactile than Western businessmen: “Be prepared to be held, touched, kissed and felt. Recoiling from such behavior would seem cold.” On the other [...]
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