Money and influence is shifting east. Now the world’s biggest investment houses are moving their senior asset managers and bankers out to the Middle East, the competition between the region’s financial centres is heating up. Before civil war tore it apart in the 1970s, Beirut was the region’s financial hotspot. Then Bahrain took on the mantle, winning much-needed credibility from the North American market. Then Qatar launched the Qatar Financial Centre, ploughing money into Doha.
And most recently of all, Dubai has launched the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), another in a series of free zones, the first being the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone, which was formed in 1985. All of the Gulf’s finance centres have been hugely ambitious projects, but the DIFC goes a step further in effectively creating a jurisdiction within a jurisdiction.
