Catering for the needs of international financiers

摘要

Paul Melly in Doha reports on Goldman Sachs' decision to set up in the Qatar Financial Centre, a purpose-built entity with its own regulatory regime as well as employment and immigration laws, entirely independent of the rest of the country. Already a global leader in tapping project finance, Qatar has been carefully developing a highly targeted niche operation, which it insists is not intended to directly compete with the established Gulf banking centres in Bahrain and Dubai. Executives in Doha point to Goldman Sachs' recent commitment to set up its new investment banking hub in the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) as evidence that Qatar's business model, concentrating on specialist activities tailored to the needs of the fast-growing national economy, is a genuinely viable strategy and not a speculative gamble.