Are regional Middle East investment banks starting to go global?
It’s no secret that investment banks in the Middle East are having a hard time currently. Headcount has been pared back in the international players as deal activity has dried up, but redundancies have been most prolific within the regional behemoths.
A few examples of regional investment banking players that have been forced to roll out redundancies are Shuaa Capital, which pared back staff number by 60% in one year, and Gulf Finance House, which now only has 55 employees – down from over 300 at its peak.
Both of these organisations are switching their focus, with Shuaa now redefining itself as a wealth management player and Gulf Finance House moving away from a deal-based revenue model.
But recruitment in regional investment banks is not dead everywhere – banks in Abu Dhabi are building their headcount, according to recruitment professionals and last week Emirates NBD named a new head of investment banking, Mohammed Kamran Wajid.
What’s interesting about the latter is that, rather than talking up its regional credentials, Emirates NBD is attempting to position its investment bank as a global operation.
This is a model already used by many of the international investment banks in the region, which utilise their connections with sovereign wealth funds and large family offices within their Middle Eastern teams to channel money to deals elsewhere in the world.
As Klaus Froelich, co-head of Morgan Stanley’s MENA investment bank, told us: “We’re dealing with a client base which, because of the Middle East oil wealth, has been a major exporter of capital. I deal with Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London and New York. My job is not to compete with local Middle Eastern banks, but to be part of a global delivery network for the bank.”
There are already some examples of regional banks hiring from international players – The National Bank of Abu Dhabi hired Michael Aissaoui from SocGen’s Paris office to lead its M&A practice, for instance. If this trend picks up it could be a rare positive for recruitment prospects in the sector.
