Westerners wary of investing in Gulf

Western investors have grown wary about investing in the once-booming Gulf, leaving markets at risk of further short-term losses and increasingly reliant on the region's own sovereign wealth funds.

Collapsing property markets and volatile oil prices have cooled some of the ardour which western investors had shown towards the Gulf in recent years.

But oil-inspired sovereign wealth funds in the region have in some cases grown despite the financial crisis, and are looking to add stimulus to their own markets rather than risk money overseas, analysts say.