Wall St. WTF: UAE Banking Stress Tests brought to you by the shadow central bank: Shuaa Capital

When I first saw an article calling for stress tests of the Gulf Banks I laughed. My opinion was that the Western Governments that had enacted them largely to try to counter the market suspicion that despite the massively unpopular but massively necessary injections of capital that the banks were still in serious trouble. Knowing that they would struggle to muster the political will to rescue the banks again they decided to try to show the world that no more injections would be necessary and then market confidence might build on itself. It seems to me that this is totally unnecessary in the Emirates.

Given that the Emirates were unwilling let Dubai World fold, what are the odds that they’ll let the banks collapse? Zero. More to the point, since the banks will ultimately rely neither on the markets nor the voters for their rescues what is the point of reassuring either as to their health? At the end of the day the largesse which rescues the banking system will come from the Al Nahyan who answer to neither and indeed answer to no one. Thus rather than a statistical shock to the values of the assets on the balance sheets of the banks what a would-be stress tester would have to determine was the odds of the various banks winning the coin toss of Al Nahyan support. Given the fact that they allowed Dubai to pour $15 billion into the Nakheel black hole my guess is the coin they’ll use for banks has heads on both sides.

Apparently the UAE central bank agrees with my conclusion if not my reasoning and has decided not to conduct these stress tests. So it has fallen on the shadow central bank of the UAE, Shuaa Capital, to conduct them. I should say that I have a lot of respect for Shuaa. When I first got to the Gulf I tried to work out partnerships with a lot of local institutions whereby my firm would provide intellectual capital and they would provide the local connections. At the time intellectual capital was rarer than local connections so the deals I struck were generally pretty favourable. When I met with Shuaa they sent me packing. They had intellectual capital in spades which they showed me over the next two years as one of our stiffest local competitors for the equity market access business. They had a vastly more nuanced understanding of the legal and regulatory environment. They knew, in a way that my compliance department in Frankfurt could never know, that you can cross the lines but you can’t cross the men who draw the lines. They were a well led and effective firm.