The fascinating thing about the business centres of the Arabian Gulf – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar in particular – is that they are so closely tied to international centres in Europe, North America and Asia.
For instance, flick through the business directory of the Dubai International Financial Centre and alongside the UAE financial institutions you’ll find American, Swiss, British, Japanese and German companies represented, to name just a few. In return, the financial companies that are ‘home-grown’ in the Middle East have a very international outlook on their business and investments including a renewed focus on Asia.
Why are all these international financial companies choosing to open offices in the Gulf?
Oil and gas wealth, transhipment business, tax advantages and proximity to more than 1.5 billion in Western Asia and North Africa are among the reasons. There is also a well-regulated financial environment in at least two of the Gulf’s financial hubs of DIFC and Qatar Financial Centre.
Then you have another set of attractions: a time zone that serves Asia and Europe, access to large numbers of high-net worth individuals and access to companies operating on the financial markets, commodities markets and stock exchanges of the GCC – that is the Gulf Cooperation Council consisting of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE (including Abu Dhabi and Dubai).
Last but not least, the GCC has an absolutely massive list of infrastructure projects including roads, railways, factories and even whole cities springing up from barren land.
It is no wonder that investment banks, insurers, asset managers and service providers have all piled in to set up shop and have remained through the toughest of economic conditions in the major financial markets and in the GCC itself.
But there’s a problem – very few of these international companies operating in the Arabian Gulf’s up-and-coming financial centres do effective Business-to-Business media communications there – and even fewer GCC-owned financial companies promote themselves fully to international business media.
The result is that there is a business communications gap created whenever companies make the leap to or from the GCC. The phenomenon is most noticeable when GCC companies operating in international finance centres such as London are obliged to trade solely within the confines of their existing business network and could be depriving themselves of the kind of new business opportunities that full B2B communications would bring. It is by no means true of all GCC companies, but a minority of corporations international ambitions but disproportionately small corporate communications resources, could also be losing out on the chance to enhance their reputation among existing partners.
It’s understandable that this state of affairs would have developed and it’s mainly the fault of the PR industry itself.
It’s a fact that communications experts or agencies with the skills or geographical reach to satisfy this demand are few and far between.
FWD, with its network in Dubai and Singapore and its specialism in financial services communications, is one of these rare agencies. Anyone wishing to bridge any business communications gap between Europe and the GCC needs to merely pick up the phone.
By David Banks
