Bond bankers are scrambling to secure business from beleaguered Gulf sovereigns that are expected to engage in record-breaking fundraising next year to cover widening fiscal deficits. Countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council are tipped to need more than US$250bn over the next two years, to be raised through a variety of means, as they seek to combat the effects of sliding oil prices. "We now estimate that the aggregate fiscal deficit of the GCC in 2015-2016 will be close to USS265bn, higher than previously estimated," Mathias Angonin, an analyst in Moody's sovereign risk group, told IFR. "This does not include debt that needs to be refinanced, so the financing needs will likely be higher than that."
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