Gulf investors are most likely to look to Latin America and Asia for new business opportunities in order to balance the region’s falling outbound investment. According to a senior official at Credit Suisse, the drop in outbound investment came because Middle East investors were only concentrating on their home markets, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The drop went from 65 percent in 2001 to less than 40 percent today. Bassam observes that this has forced investors in the Gulf to diversify and have since become more interested in the emerging markets of Asia and Latin America.