The sands of Qatar might as well be gold dust, or so one is tempted to think when contemplating the recent rise of Qatar to one of the world’s three wealthiest nations with GDP per capita clocking in at $62,914. This may not be a guarantee of well-being or happiness for the Qataris, but in terms of disposable incomes and needs for financial services go, the Gulf state appears to have all the makings of a heaven for innovative banking providers. (Even if the estimates for purchase power parity [PPP] to GDP, which correlate the national income to cost-of-living factors more accurately than nominal GDP, put Qatar in a slightly less illustrious spot on the world wealth scale.) Qatari banks results for FY 2006 showed a net profit of QAR5.10 billion ($1.4 billion) (against QAR4.18 billion for FY 2005) and total assets of QAR 9.1 billion. Analysts noted, however, that
