Internet shopping has yet to take off in the Middle East, but online trading is another story, with banks and brokerages scrambling to set up platforms to tap into the surging demand for the service. In the last few years, online trading (OT) has started to flourish in the region, with institutions in Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Lebanon getting in on the act where people can trade, at the click of a button, in stock markets, foreign currencies, securities, futures and options. The sector is growing at such a rate that major OT players like Mubasher, which started in Saudi Arabia and expanded into Dubai and Abu Dhabi, then the rest of the Gulf, has plans to go global by entering the African, Indian, Indonesian, Iranian, US and European markets. “We started with 300 subscribers in 1999, and went to half a million in 2008, so
