Qatar looks for gaps and tries to fill them

When the Arab Spring swept across the region last year, the financial markets’ sense of the region’s safe havens was challenged. Bahrain, which for decades had positioned itself as the hub state of the Gulf, the safe and familiar conduit through which to serve Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, was suddenly in the headlines for unfamiliar and unwelcome reasons.

So attention turned instead to the other states with the infrastructure and regulation to court international business: the Dubai International Financial Centre and, closer to Bahrain, Qatar.