Until recently, Alexander Batchvarov, head of securitisation analysis at Merrill Lynch investment bank, did not spend much time worrying about the Middle East. For the main arenas of activity in the global structured finance world – or the sector of finance where credit is sliced and diced into new instruments – were places such as Europe and the US.
However, this year, Mr Batchvarov has suddenly started watching the Gulf as well. At the start of the year, Merrill Lynch became the first bulge-bracket investment bank to start producing regular research reports on Gulf securitisation issues. And last month the US bank produced research on a topic that might have seemed inconceivable five years ago – the commercial real estate securitisation sector in the United Arabs Emirates.
