“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” said Mark Twain when his obituary was published. And so might be said about Dubai. It doesn’t mean the emirate isn’t feeling lousy, but the story isn’t finished – the patient is sick and the cure may be hard to find, but the schadenfreude and stereotyping do no justice to the problem.
My firm – Denton Wilde Sapte – has for years been heavily committed to the Middle East, a region containing immense wealth and natural resources. The feedback from our clients – and we’ve been operating in the region since the early 1960s – is that, Dubai’s role as a centre, a regional hub, and a tolerant and exciting place to live, will remain. If we judged the economic future of any city primarily by ostentation, profligacy and an excess of property speculation, then New York and London would be written off too. The fact is that there are some great and ingenious businesses in the emirate, and they will survive.
