To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. IFR’s Global Awards umbrella has expanded over the years. If the London event – that is entering its 20th year in 2015 – captures global capital markets activity, events in New York and Hong Kong and now Dubai celebrate the best of banking across the Middle East, the US, Canada, Latin America and throughout Asia. In 2013, Middle East

IFR’s inaugural Middle East Awards dinner took place at the Ritz-Carlton DIFC in Dubai on March 31, extending our global awards platform to a new capital markets region. Having started IFR’s Awards in 1980 in London, the franchise expanded to Hong Kong in the late 1990s, capturing the build-out in Asian capital markets, and then to New York in 2010 for the US, Canadian and Latin American markets. Increasingly deep and vibrant capital markets in the Middle East allowed a wide array of issuers to

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. (Updated with full syndicate for Emaar Malls in paragraph eight) After a drought that began with the financial crisis of 2008, there are signs that a Gulf equity capital market pipeline that has been quietly building in recent months may finally be about to bear fruit. Already this year, state-owned Qatar Petroleum has raised QR3.23bn

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. In a year of adventurous deal structures, the US$20bn Sadara petrochemicals project, a joint venture between heavyweights Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemicals, pioneered one that may yet prove to be the most significant. The Saudi petrochemicals facility completed a rare project sukuk issue, pricing SR7.5bn (US$2bn) of Islamic bonds at 95bp

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Emirati mall owner Majid Al Futtaim was all set to bring the region’s first corporate hybrid bond offering when it began investor meetings in late May 2013. The company had just closed a Dh2.5bn (US$680m) buyout of Carrefour’s stake in a hypermarkets joint venture, and the bond issue was to raise money to partially fund that purchase

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Dubai’s flagship airline is inevitably one of the most active issuers from the Middle East. Proud of the youth of its fleet and with ambitious growth plans, the capex never ends. But Emirates is not a simple case of big is beautiful, the airline is just as flexible and ambitious in its funding plans, putting it on a par with many EMEA

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Many banks in the Middle East remain exclusively domestic players, ceasing operations at the border and, often, reliant on government mandates. Generally, Qatari banks do business in Qatar, Emirati banks in the UAE and so on. Emirates NBD is one bank that has expanded its investment banking franchise as its parent has started to move

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. At a time when many international banks are rushing to return bankers to Dubai and expressing an unwavering commitment to the Middle East, HSBC can, without fear of contradiction, genuinely claim to have boots on the ground in a business that has racked up 60 years in the region. The bank is reaping the rewards, having managed success

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Debt capital market issuance was the stand-out star in Saudi Arabia’s capital markets over the past 12 months. Wherever you look, trailblazing deals stand out. Saudi Electricity’s April 2014 US$2.5bn print of 10-year and 30-year paper was its third dual-tranche sukuk issue in three years, co-underwritten by Deutsche Bank, HSBC and JP

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Near-record volumes of international debt issuance from Gulf issuers in 2012 had already created an air of optimism as 2013 dawned. But if international bond volumes last year ultimately failed to match the previous year in dollar terms, the region still grew in stature as a capital markets venue. That was due partly to its relative m

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. As the debate around bank disintermediation in favour of capital markets solutions gathers pace, project bonds have moved to centre stage. That’s no great surprise, as infrastructure was always going to be a major area of focus for this process given the truly gargantuan sums of money needed world-wide – US$57trn out to 2030, accordin

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Middle East loan volume in the first three months of this year reflected global trends in the syndicated loan market and was down significantly – at US$6.4bn, 51% less than the first quarter of 2013, according to Thomson Reuters data. “It was quite busy at the beginning of the year, but we have gone from having four or five deals on t

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. History doesn’t repeat itself, the saying goes, but it does rhyme. There’s an echo of that sentiment currently to be found in Dubai in general, and more particularly in the sector that drives pretty much everything the desert city was, is, and aspires to be: real estate. Dubai is literally built on the foundations of its property sect

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. There seems to be little let-up to the storms blowing around emerging markets. Ukraine is imploding, Russian equities have collapsed and the economies known as the “fragile five” – Indonesia, Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – have suffered months of volatility. But amid these ructions, thanks to political stability and stable e