The Gulf News, reporting the deal, notes "the growing interest of Gulf banks in new banking opportunities in Russia."
"Banks in Russia and the CIS are undergoing a massive expansion phase, giving Middle Eastern banks an ideal opportunity to diversify their assets in new and fast-growing markets," said Abdel Wahed al-Fahim, one of Emirates’s bank managers, to the newspaper.
In March this year, Emirates Bank, together with the British ICICI Bank, arranged for a syndicated, time-limited loan in the amount of $ 290 million to the Russian bank Uralsib. Gulf News believes that "these deals underline the growing importance of the Middle East as the stock resources of banks in Russia and the CIS."
