UAE banks ask not for whom the bad loans toll

* username: rupertbu

No one is happy when the knacker shows up on their doorstep. It means something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

It’s no surprise, then, that when Bertrand Guillot came to Dubai last week to offer his services, a lot of the doors he knocked on went unanswered.

In the world of finance, Mr Guillot is the equivalent of the knacker men who collect dead and dying animals from farms and render them into useful byproducts, lard and tallow. Mr Guillot buys bad debts from banks and tries to turn them back into profitable assets.