Global Investing

Bahrain’s civil unrest — which had a one-year anniversary this week — has taken a toll on the local economy and left a deep scar on the Gulf state’s aspiration to become an international financial hub.

A new paper from the Sovereign Wealth Fund Initiative, a research programme at Center for Emerging Market Enterprises (CEME) at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, examines how the political instability of 2011 is threatening Bahrain’s efforts in the past 30 years to diversify its economy and develop the financial centre.

Asim Ali from University of Western Ontario and Shatha Al-Aswad, assistant vice president at State Street, argue in the paper that even before the revolt, Bahrain lagged in building the foundations of a truly international hub in the face of competition from Dubai and Qatar.

Unlike DIFC (Dubai International Financial  Centre) and QFC (Qatar Financial Centre), Bahrain insists upon local labor; currently 70% of employees in its banking and financial services industry are Bahrainis.  Bahrain’s reluctance to hire non-resident  talent  has made  Dubai…an alternative for those investors looking for a centre with more flexible labor practices such as DIFC provide…  The constraints  – a lack of formalized institutional and regulatory structure, along with an ad hoc business environment, underdeveloped infrastructure, and under-supplied skilled workforce – have negatively affected its growth and  potential to become the financial gateway in the Middle East.

Then came the crackdown of protesters.

Its ruling Al-Khalifa family unleashed  a ferocious extra-judicial crackdown against the opposition. It appeared the standard axiom of Gulf ruling families – securing legitimacy and counter-acting political opposition through redistribution of oil wealth – was sorely insufficient to address  citizens’ grievances.  These led not only to international opprobrium of  the  Bahrain government but also made foreign businesses reconsider Bahrain as a financial center – with many foreign business shifting  workers and operations to Dubai… Indeed, confidence in Bahrain as a financial hub took a major blow along with its image as a stable, tolerant and liberal state.

Tensions over Iran may be helping to push up oil prices as traders worry about a widespread embargo on the country’s crude oil but markets in neighbouring Gulf energy-rich economies are not benefiting.

One year after the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, investors remain sensitive to political risk in the Middle East.

Debt insurance costs have risen sharply this month for gas exporter Qatar and oil giant Saudi Arabia, just as global worries appear to be easing about the euro zone crisis.

Now that markets appear to have decided that a $1 trillion stabilisation package from the European Union is enough to soothe global nerves and ward off a sovereign debt crisis, emerging market sovereigns and corporates may start to issue bonds again.

Emerging market debt issuance was heading for a bumper year — at more than $100 billion issued so far — before investors started to fear an imminent default by Greece and markets froze up.  

But a return this week in emerging sovereign debt spreads below the psychologically key threshold of 300 basis points over U.S. Treasuries is likely to encourage issuers back again.