Charting a different standard
Standard Chartered is moving 100 staff to Dubai. Is it down to low-cost local staff or local customers?
Staff making the move will be monitoring the bank's loans and trading interest rate products and the currencies of G10 countries.
With pay for traders lower in Dubai than London, is the move cost-driven? And are other banks likely to follow in Standard Chartered's footsteps?
Mark Thomas, a London-based analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, says Standard Chartered's decision is also about being closer to customers - 92% of the bank's pre-tax profits came from Asia last year.
After opening a base in the Dubai Financial Centre earlier this month, Standard Chartered is also in the process of launching a private banking arm in Dubai. It plans to double its number of advisors across the Middle East, Asia and Africa to up to 300 in the next two years.
Other banks considering expansion in the region include Deutsche Bank, which is expanding its local asset management business, and Barclays Capital and Goldman Sachs, both of which are building in wealth management.
Standard Chartered is well placed to make use of lower-cost local staff - the bank is one of the few in the region to have achieved the target of 38% Emirates staff in 2006.
Banks in Dubai are also finding it increasingly easy to attract staff from overseas. Russell Adam, a partner at Akamai Financial Markets, says bankers based outside the region are increasingly happy to make the move: "Previously, candidates asked about posts in Hong Kong and Singapore, now they ask about positions in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai."
