After a subdued 2010, this year was hotly anticipated to be one of active recruitment in the Gulf financial sector. Unfortunately, political uprisings in the region, combined with an increasingly gloomy global picture, has meant another quiet 12 months.

Nonetheless, some have benefited while others have fallen by the wayside. Here is our considered opinion on 2011.

2011 was a good year for:

1) Dubai and Qatar

Considering the move of senior investment bankers away from the Middle East back to Western markets this year, it doesn't seem obvious that the main financial centres for international operations – Dubai and Qatar – have had a decent year.

However, one of the consequences of the Arab Spring is that more financial services professionals and organisation have been looking for regional safe havens. Both Qatar and Dubai have benefitted from an influx of new business and have consequently moved up the rankings in the latest Global Financial Services Index as well as moving up the desirability scale for expat workers .

In recent months the number of firms registering at both the DIFC and QFC has been on the increase and most commentators are anticipating more new registers in 2012.

2) Wealth management

In terms of recruitment, if there's been one sector that has remained consistently expansive throughout 2011 it's wealth management. For a start, there's the fact that both international and regional players have been hiring throughout the year.

Then, there's the trend of investment bankers in the region looking to leverage their contacts and move into a role in the ultra-high-net-worth wealth management sector. Finally, there's the shake-up at Shuaa Capital – which announced plans to re-launch its investment bank as a platform for wealthy clients – which suggests it's the place to be in the long term.

3) The appeal of sovereign wealth funds

Sovereign wealth funds have always had to perform something of a juggling act when it comes to recruitment; balancing the political requirements to offer attract careers to local candidates whilst drafting in international expertise to ensure they have the required financial expertise immediately available.

On the former point, they tend to target local candidates early, identifying bright students and mentoring them from high school, before offering an intensive technical training programme. The latter has been a little more tricky, however.

SWFs have been reluctant to pay out large incentives to attract international talent, but definitely have a requirement for investment banking, private equity and asset management expertise.

In Qatar, for instance, we understood that the QIA had plans to increase headcount by 100 this year, while other large SWFs in the region had an ongoing need to recruit.

Generally speaking, with opportunities scant elsewhere in the world, their ability to attract this expertise has increased. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, for instance, recently took on the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch Alternative Investments, Benjamin Weston.

And 2011 was a bad year for:

1) Bahrain

This year was generally one of upheaval for the MENA region, with popular uprisings again the political regimes in locations as diverse as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Palestine and Syria. However, in terms of financial centres in the Gulf, it was Bahrain where the most serious and violent clashes occurred.

The Shia majority in Bahrain rose up in protest against the ruling Sunni minority, with bloody consequences. More than 30 people have been killed since the protests began in February and the Bahraini government's handling of the situation has been condemned by the international community and the kingdom's reputation has inevitably suffered.

At one point, the anti-government protests were targeted at the financial centre in Manama, in a move that has since proved significant. A number of expat bankers and financial services professionals left the kingdom for safe havens in Dubai and Qatar, but organisations were slower to move.

French banks Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas, which both had significant operations in Bahrain eventually relocated staff to Dubai – as well as asset manager Robecco – but the larger organisations haven't pulled out entirely.

Nonetheless, Bahrain's financial sector will take some time to recover.

2) Investment banking

In the wake of the 2008 crisis, when many international banks pared back their regional headcount, the remaining teams on the ground in the Gulf were relatively small. Nonetheless, deal activity in the Middle East this year was particularly slow, and – with cuts happening elsewhere in the world – the region has inevitably shared some pain.

Equity capital markets has been particularly badly affected, but a number of investment banks, such as Credit Suisse, Credit Agricole, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Nomura and UBS, either relocated key people back to Western markets or made redundancies within their local teams. Meanwhile, large regional players like Shuaa Capital and EFG Hermes have also cut headcount in their investment banks.

3) Retail broking

It's been another tough 12 months for those working in the brokerage space. While the argument in 2010 was that there should be more merger activity within the sector to give the smaller brokers (particularly badly affected by the slumping trading volumes) a better chance of survival, this year proved that even the bigger players are suffering.

The likes of EFG Hermes and Shuaa Capital – both among the larger brokers in the region – have been underperforming and both HSBC and Rasmala felt compelled to move out of the retail broking sector entirely. Overall, the number of firms operating in the UAE fell from 110 in 2010 to around 60 this year.