I work for at best a third-tier organization - at best to be frank, it's fun though not to be in a huge monster despite the Titanic's utterly cretinous management. They were smart enough to get involved in MENA before the oil market hotted up to make an emergent financing boom, even if they thought they could do it without adapting to local conditions (or rather by copying their European approach, why that seemed logical always escaped me, but...).

The fact I am getting multiple approaches without even looking doesn't really say much about me. It says a great deal about the over-buying of talent into the Gulf. And their search to penetrate semi-familiar emerging areas. In many ways this is smarter than sinking more money into high priced EU and US assets, above all since in the US the risks of political or semi-political lawsuits is high and rapidly rising (see the Pearl Widow lawsuit; the SEC "terror financing research tool" that was taken down).

On that front, I have to say that if you're someone from even a vaguely "politically exposed" (in US domestic politics terms) country, naitonality or having any business connexions to areas where American provincials are hot to trot about in their own ill-informed manner, it is best not to get involved in US markets. You face, in my opinion, absurd political risk, and with a rapidly declining dollar, why bother with the risk when solid emerging markets present interesting risk-return profiles with more obvious political issues.