Barclays, the British banking group, is looking to hire bankers to help to boost its Dubai-based corporate banking division and increase its presence across the Arabian Gulf.
With investment banking increasingly falling out of fashion, the United Kingdom's second-biggest lender is adding new staff in Dubai to tap into increasing trade flows, said Rezwan Mirza, the head of Barclays' corporate banking division in the GCC.
"This region has a lot of fundamental ongoing growth," he said. "As we speak there's a very strong recovery story … which we're looking to take advantage of." The bank is seeking to hire at all levels, from junior analysts to directors, while also investing in technology to increase the ease of transactions between companies.
Barclays, which recently announced a tie-up of its African assets with its Absa subsidiary allowing it to expand further in the continent, expects trade between the Middle East and Africa will likely be a strong focus of local expansion plans.
"Dubai, with its infrastructure, is a very critical location on the world map and is a major trading hub globally," Mr Mirza said. "The trade linkages between the Middle East and Africa continue to grow … North Africa faces some ongoing challenges, but in sub-Saharan Africa it's probably not as well understood that the political structures have changed," he said.
Gulf companies were likely to start finding new opportunities in Africa in industries such as agriculture and minerals, Mr Mirza added.
Corporate lending, once derided as the drab second-cousin to the flashy dealmakers of investment banking, is in the midst of a hiring boom as banks seek to grow their way out of the global downturn.
While rises in capital requirements and bloated salaries have made investment banking an increasingly costly venture for global banks, corporate banking is once again driving lenders' growth in the region.
Globally, banks including UBS and Citigroup have announced thousands of layoffs in recent months as they refocus their global businesses, while Credit Suisse is also relocating investment banking staff from Dubai to other Gulf states that are growing faster.
The regional head of JPMorgan, Sjoerd Leenart, said last month that it had expanded its local staffing levels during the past two years, with a particular focus on corporate banking.
However, other banks were also seeking to grow their corporate banking business lines, said Giles Blundell, a partner at the GCC Partners, a financial sector recruitment firm.
"Expensive investment bankers are being laid off, and in the corporate banking space - not just here but in Qatar and elsewhere - they're hiring like it's going out of fashion," he said.
The hiring boom could reflect a desire on the part of banks to start lending again, especially to small businesses, Mr Blundell added.
"Seventy per cent of our banking mandates are for corporate banking and a big chunk of that is around the small and medium enterprise space," he said.
Stripping out personal lending, credit provided by banks operating in the UAE grew by 2.7 per cent to Dh841.5 billion (US$229.09bn) during the first nine months of the year, according to data from the Central Bank.
