by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Banking & Finance, Qatar Company Stories
⚡ TL;DRDubai leads the Gulf financial centre race on network effects, Abu Dhabi has built the most technically sophisticated legal framework, Riyadh is using market size and mandatory headquarters rules to force relocation, and Doha competes as a specialised...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Banking & Finance, Qatar Company Stories
⚡ TL;DRThe Qatar Stock Exchange lists around fifty companies and is dominated by a handful of very large names, with banking and energy-linked industrials accounting for most of the market capitalisation. Its 2014 upgrade to emerging market status brought...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Banking & Finance, Qatar Company Stories
⚡ TL;DRThe Qatar Financial Centre is an onshore jurisdiction with its own commercial law based on English common law, its own courts, its own regulator, full foreign ownership and a low corporate tax rate. Unlike a free zone it is not confined to a physical...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Banking & Finance, Qatar Company Stories
⚡ TL;DRQatar Islamic Bank is the country’s largest Sharia-compliant institution and a beneficiary of one of the most consequential regulatory decisions in Gulf banking: the 2011 requirement that conventional banks close their Islamic windows. That ruling...
by Ekrem Duman | Jul 25, 2026 | Qatar Banking & Finance, Qatar Company Stories
⚡ TL;DRQNB is the largest bank in the Middle East and Africa by assets, built from a domestic monopoly position in a wealthy small state and then expanded through acquisitions in Egypt, Turkey and across Africa. Roughly half-owned by the sovereign wealth fund,...
