Transitioning from IB Dubai to NYC
Hello,
So I am a rising senior at a target school. Due to my Arab background, I think it would be much easier for me to land a full time IB position in Dubai.
However, I would hate to have to stay in Dubai forever.
I am wondering, is it difficult to transfer from Dubai IB to NYC after 1-2 years working in Dubai?
Ideally, I would be landing a position at a BB, so I would have a prestigous name, just not an NYC office.
Any advice would be generally helpful. THX
Best bet would be to transfer internally as was mentioned, but if you go to a target in NY then why not directly recruit for NY roles?
Banking in Dubai / Middle East is not a great experience, limited deal flow, small teams, sweat shop culture, basically all of the banks in the region pitching for the same handful of mandates, and not particularly respected internally within the firms. It’s a niche region and I would expect you would also get lower priority in terms of transferring compared with the larger offices (Other US, London, HK) which are much more connected with NY. Dubai offices are usually generalist and report to EMEA / International head, so they are not really part of any of the conventional “groups,” whereas someone in London TMT would have some overlap with the NY TMT team.
If you really want to be in the region and stay there for life, it is fine. If you're looking to be there for 2-4 years, it isn't a great career move, and I wouldn't recommend it.
The international banks all have very small teams of BBs are fairly strong / have transferred from the London offices where they were in relatively senior roles.
Big 4 advisory probably does as many if not more transactions compared to the global BB/EBs. On the buyside the situation isn't much different. There are 1-2 decent HFs that sit out of Dubai for tax reasons but invest in other markets. PE at this point is basically the SWFs out of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi and Qatar. Probably the only one worth even looking at is ADIA, which hires a large number of expats but still has a huge amount of bureaucracy and probably isn't worth being at after a quick associate 2-3 years and then heading to business school. On the corporate PE side after Abraaj's collapse there is Investcorp in Bahrain and a handful of mid-market funds in Dubai / AD, all of which I'm sure are struggling to raise new funds and haven't had particularly good returns either.
Combine this with a region suffering from a downturn in oil + downturn in the real estate sector + current mess in hospitality / tourism, which drives a huge amount of its economy, and the situation isn't great. The latter I'm sure will bounce back in a few months, but as a region, and Dubai in particular, I don't think it is on an upswing by any means.