One of Kuwait’s most enduring memories from the financial crisis was the unprecedented queues of anxious depositors that formed outside the branches of Gulf Bank after rumours of the lender’s financial distress spread in October 2008.
A derivatives trade gone horribly awry had straddled Gulf Bank with a massive loss, sparking a bank run – the first in living memory in the region – and forcing a swift bail-out from Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund.
Gulf Bank’s derivatives mishap may have been the nadir for the country’s large and varied financial sector, but most of the industry has suffered from the aftershocks of the global and regional economic downturn.
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