Goldman Sachs’ most senior investment banker in the Middle East is returning to London less than a year after moving to Dubai.
Alasdair Warren, the investment bank’s head of financing for the Middle East and Africa, is leaving Dubai as a result of slowing activity in the region and growing demand for people with UK market experience, Financial News wrote, citing sources familiar with the situation.
A Goldman Sachs spokesperson told Arabian Business on Monday that they company is not commenting on the report.
Warren was head of UK investment banking at the firm before making the move to Dubai and has a total of 19 years of investment banking experience.
In September last year he told delegates at a Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) conference that Goldman was bullish on Dubai and that it expected the region to play a greater role in the global economy in the future.
He added that the group sometimes had “difficulty accessing” some of the opportunities in the region.
Many international investment banks boosted their presence in the Arab Gulf countries last year in the hope that the region would be relatively immune to the international financial crisis.
However, in the fourth quarter it became clear that GCC economies would slow significantly on the back of lower oil revenue, plunging real estate prices and an exodus of speculative investors who had been betting on local currencies being revalued against the dollar.
The UAE’s largest investment bank, Shuaa Capital, said in December that it would lay off 21 people, or 9 percent of its Dubai workforce, as a result of slowing market activity.
Mashreqbank, the country’s largest private bank, earlier this month announced that it has axed up to 175 staff, or four percent of its global workforce. (Reuters)
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