Business | Banking
HSBC says Gulf real estate and financial stocks most attractive
The region is benefiting from a fivefold increase in oil prices.
- Reuters
- Published: 01:24 March 7, 2008
Dubai: Gulf real estate and financial companies, set to benefit from higher infrastructure spending, are the most attractive bets in a region largely insulated from global financial turmoil, HSBC said on Wednesday.
HSBC said it won a licence from the market regulator of the UAE to set up a brokerage firm, the country's first managed by an international bank as foreign interest in the region grows.
"Investor interest in the Middle East is the highest it's been because of the international situation," said Paul Cooper, head of equities for Central Europe, Middle East and Africa at HSBC in London.
"There is an unprecedented set of catalysts making the Middle East very interesting now."
Gulf markets including Kuwait - which has gained 12 per cent this year - have outperformed several emerging markets, which have been hit by fears of a US recession.
The Gulf region is benefiting from a fivefold increase in oil prices in the last six years and has more than $1 trillion of infrastructure projects in the pipeline.
"The focus, in terms of which sectors will benefit from monetary policy and infrastructure investment is really the financial and real estate sectors," Cooper said.
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