Insolvencies, fraud allegations and lax accounting: credit crunch reveals GCC’s business underbelly

Ratings downgrades for major Saudi investors, a potential systemic crisis in Kuwait where investment companies are in freefall, fraud charges against well-connected Dubai developers and a marked lack of performance by Abu Dhabi’s investment flagship. A cross-section of business stories in this issue of GSN paints a sobering picture of the potential pitfalls that can befall investors in the GCC, even if the region hasn’t been as dramatically affected by the global credit crunch as other parts of the world.