Standard Chartered Sees Challenging 2012 For Mideast; Low Growth - Exec - Zawya

Standard Chartered (STAN.LN), the U.K-based lender with an emerging markets focus, expects to post low single digit growth in the Middle East next year as the Arab Spring and global financial turbulence weighs on economic sentiment in the region, a senior executive at the bank said Thursday.

"It (2012) could be quite challenging because the Middle East is very much a part of the globalized world. We (the Middle East) are not immune to what is happening to the rest of the world," V. Shankar, who was recently appointed group executive director of the bank, told Zawya Dow Jones in an interview.

In addition, he said the outlook for the U.S. isn't rosy either, the global cost of funding is rising as banks are deleveraging and that there could be a problem in availability in dollar funding in the Middle East.

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