Insight with Haslinda Amin, a daily news program featuring in-depth, high-profile interviews and analysis to give viewers the complete picture on the stories that matter. The show features prominent leaders spanning the worlds of business, finance, politics and culture. (Source: Bloomberg)
Insight with Haslinda Amin, a daily news program featuring in-depth, high-profile interviews and analysis to give viewers the complete picture on the stories that matter. The show features prominent leaders spanning the worlds of business, finance, politics and culture. (Source: Bloomberg)
Hong Kong lenders have only “insignificant” exposure to the Middle East, the city’s banking regulator said, although analysts expect escalating tensions in the region could slow local banks’ expansion plans in the near term. “The exposures of the Hong Kong banking sector to the Middle East are insignificant,” a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said in response to an inquiry ...
Hong Kong lenders have only “insignificant” exposure to the Middle East, the city’s banking regulator said, although analysts expect escalating tensions in the region could slow local banks’ expansion plans in the near term. “The exposures of the Hong Kong banking sector to the Middle East are insignificant,” a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said in response to an inquiry from the South China Morning Post. “The HKMA does not comment on market rumours,” she added, responding to a Bloomberg report earlier this week that said the authority had asked at least two local lenders to review their Middle East exposures amid rising geopolitical tensions. Advertisement HSBC and Standard Chartered – two of the three note-issuing banks in the city – have stepped up their presence in the Middle East in recent years to capture growing cross-border trade and wealth management opportunities. Standard Chartered opened a branch in Saudi Arabia in 2021, adding to its long-established presence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it has operated for more than a century. Advertisement HSBC, meanwhile, opened a 24,000 sq ft wealth centre in Dubai in September, its first wealth hub in the Middle East. The facility represents the bank’s largest investment in its premier banking segment in the UAE in two decades, according to HSBC’s local CEO.
For sheer escalatory potential, look no further than the speed at which the six-day-old war in Iran has drawn in countries across the Middle East , causing the biggest energy shock since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While the long-term consequences of military action by the United States and Israel against Iran are unpredictable, worst-case scenarios for the global economy and ...
For sheer escalatory potential, look no further than the speed at which the six-day-old war in Iran has drawn in countries across the Middle East , causing the biggest energy shock since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While the long-term consequences of military action by the United States and Israel against Iran are unpredictable, worst-case scenarios for the global economy and markets have begun to unfold. Although the least important thing about any war is how it affects financial markets , major conflicts in the oil-rich Gulf are particularly contagious. As Deutsche Bank noted in a report on March 3, “geopolitical events don’t usually cause a sustained market reaction. Indeed, we’ve already seen that in 2026 with Venezuela and Greenland . But the exception is when the geopolitical event has a macro channel to affect markets, and events in Iran are a prime example of that”. Advertisement In fact, energy analysts and geopolitical risk experts themselves were caught off guard by the scale and severity of the conflict. In a rare admission by a Wall Street bank that it fundamentally misjudged the threat to energy markets , JPMorgan said, “our base case assumed that an unprecedented disruption [to energy flows] would remain improbable. That assumption failed”. Investors have belatedly come to the realisation that it is what Iran, not the US, does next that will prove more consequential. While US President Donald Trump’s objectives in unleashing war in the Middle East remain unclear , the response of the Iranian regime, whose very survival is at stake, is more discernible. Advertisement
How Likely Is It That Pakistan Joins The Third Gulf War In Support Of Its Saudi Ally? Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack , Pakistan could set into motion a sequence of events that restores its role as the US’ top regional ally , returns US troops to Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase if they later team up against the Taliban, and therefore build a new regional order at the geostrategic crossroads o...
How Likely Is It That Pakistan Joins The Third Gulf War In Support Of Its Saudi Ally? Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack , Pakistan could set into motion a sequence of events that restores its role as the US’ top regional ally , returns US troops to Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase if they later team up against the Taliban, and therefore build a new regional order at the geostrategic crossroads of South and Central Asia. Saudi Arabia has been attacked multiple times by Iran on the pretext that the US military infrastructure on its territory has been used to some extent in the US campaign against Iran , which led to what can be described as the Third Gulf War , in spite of the Saudi-Pakistani Mutual Defense Pact from last September . Iran clearly wasn’t deterred, but Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar still reminded Iran about it in what seems to either be another attempt to deter an escalation or intimate impending involvement in the war. In his words , “ We have a defence pact with Saudi Arabia. I conveyed to the Iranian side about our defence pact, to which he asked me to ensure that KSA’s land was not used. Then I had shuttle communication, as a result of which, as you can compare, the least attacks from Iran are to Saudi Arabia and Oman.” Objectively speaking, it reflects poorly on Pakistan that Iran ignored Dar’s reminder and still attacked Saudi Arabia, hence why he coped that “the least attacks from Iran are to Saudi Arabia”. Mutual defense pacts are supposed to deter attacks, not simply reduce the number and intensity thereof, which in any case didn’t even happen like Dar claimed since Iran continues to attack Saudi Arabia with gusto. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now thrown into the dilemma of either activating their mutual defense pact to significantly escalate the conflict through their joint involvement therein , likely coordinated with their shared US ally if that happens, or tacitly admit that it’s militarily impotent. The crushing reputational cost...