Several large banks advised staff to stay away from their Dubai offices on Wednesday, after Iran signaled a new willingness to target Middle East economic centers and banks with ties to the United States.
Citi, the global bank, told its staff to immediately depart what had been its longtime regional headquarters in the packed skyscrapers of Dubai’s International Financial Center. An internal notice reviewed by The New York Times cited “heightened security concerns” and urged all to find “the nearest safe place away from the office.”
Standard Chartered, which had put in place a work-from-home advisory last week, reissued it on Wednesday, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The British bank, which has a large presence in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, has a large regional hub in Dubai.
In nearby Qatar, H.S.B.C. closed all its bank branches, Reuters reported, citing an announcement sent to customers. H.S.B.C. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Global business has, of course, already been touched by the war, with global financial markets in a persistent whipsaw and Iranian drones hitting Amazon data centers in the region, for instance.
That pressure has ratcheted up, however, in the wake of an attack overnight on a bank in Iran, for which a spokesman for a command unit of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. blamed the United States and Israel, according to Iranian state media.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting reported that the building linked to Bank Sepah came under missile attack. That action, the guard spokesman said, gave Iran free rein to financial firms belonging to the United States in the region. He called it “an example of illegitimate and unconventional behavior in warfare.”
That new threat produced new angst in the United Arab Emirates and particularly Dubai, which has for decades been a gleaming and growing hub for global capitalism.
Banks, asset managers and hedge funds have poured into offices there in recent years, attracted by its lack of income tax and convenient access to deep regional wealth controlled by governments and individuals tied to the oil and gas industry. For similar reasons, Western financiers have also begun to move to cities such as Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which remains a potential hot spot if the conflict continues to grow.
A Citi spokesman said that the “vast majority” of its staff in the U.A.E. were already working remotely and that the decision to empty its offices was made “out of an abundance of caution.”
Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for The Times, writing about Wall Street and the banking industry.
The post Banks in Gulf Evacuate Their Offices appeared first on New York Times.
