Middle East risk indicators – creditor attitudes after Dubai crisis

Trade finance and insurance trends are changing as a result of the emergence in 2009 of major debt events in Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries. Bankers and insurers have increasingly cited a moral hazard in dealing with trade finance risks in the GCC, and one year after the global downturn derailed Dubai’s explosive growth, its largest corporate entity, the state-owned Dubai World, announced in November that it was suspending payments on some $26bn of its $59bn or so of outstanding obligations.