Banking talent in the Gulf: when the global names retreat, who fills the seat

A senior managing director at one of the global investment banks took a regional role at a Gulf local champion in late 2023. The move was, in headline terms, a step sideways: the title was comparable, the geographic remit was narrower, and the institutional brand on the candidate's CV would, on first read, be considered a downgrade in the senior banking market. By the standards of how senior banking moves were read in 2010, or even in 2018, the appointment would have been read as a soft landing for an executive whose path at the global firm had stalled.

That is not how the move was read in 2023. It was read, by the candidates' peers, by the regional banking community, and increasingly by the global banks themselves, as a substantively upward move. The local platform had built a P&L the global firm no longer ran in the region. The senior MD's package was higher than the equivalent package at the global firm would have been. The strategic ownership, the team-building authority and the operating discretion the role offered were, in 2023 terms, the package of a real regional senior banking job, of the kind that the global firms had, in most cases, structurally retreated from over the previous decade.

The move was not isolated. Across the senior banking and asset-management market in the Gulf, JOH Partners' practice tracks a pattern that reverses the hiring ladder of the 1990s and 2000s. Of the thirty-eight senior banking and asset-management seats we tracked in the GCC during 2026, nine were filled, between 2022 and 2026, by candidates moving from a global name (HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citi, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon and the comparable Northern European universals) to a regional or local platform. The traffic was almost entirely one-way. The previous direction, regional banker moving up to the global name, was the assumed pattern of senior banking-career building in the Gulf for two generations. It is no longer.

This piece is the read on what changed, who professionalised, who is now in motion, and what this means for senior banking talent in the Gulf over the next five years.

Of the thirty-eight senior banking seats JOH Partners tracked in the GCC during 2026, nine were filled between 2022 and 2026 by candidates moving from a global name to a regional or local platform. The hiring ladder has reversed.

The shape of the retreat

The global banks have not left the Gulf. They have rationalised. The structural changes between 2020 and 2026 are visible in the public disclosures and the press announcements; they are not contested at the level of fact, only at the level of how the narrative is interpreted. HSBC has substantially restructured its Middle East and North Africa coverage, with senior investment-banking roles concentrated to a smaller London or Dubai-only footprint; the previous full-coverage senior team across Riyadh, Cairo and the smaller Gulf capitals has been either consolidated, removed, or rotated to global roles. Standard Chartered has gone through several rounds of structural review of its regional presence, with the senior wealth and private-banking layer of the previous decade meaningfully reduced. Citi has run multiple rationalisations of its consumer and commercial-banking presence across the region, with the corporate-banking layer concentrated to a smaller senior team running fewer, larger relationships. JPMorgan has held a more focused senior coverage model throughout, but has not extended it; the senior layer has not been expanded into the new Saudi Vision 2030 platforms in the way that the regional commentary, ten years ago, would have predicted. Goldman Sachs maintains the senior coverage footprint that has historically defined its presence in the region, but its bench layer has thinned in 2023 to 2025 in ways that the publicly reported partner-level departures have made visible. BNY Mellon and the comparable global custodians have rationalised their regional middle and back office to a substantially smaller senior team.

The aggregate picture is a structural retreat in the senior layer of full-service global banking presence in the Gulf. The retreat has not, in most cases, been announced as a strategic exit; it has been the cumulative effect of cost programmes, capital-allocation reviews, and the gradual reweighting of senior banking attention toward Asian and US growth markets. The result, in the senior-talent market, is that the seats at the global names which a senior banker in 2010 would have viewed as the apex of a regional banking career are, in 2026, fewer in number, narrower in remit, and substantially less likely to offer the strategic ownership and operating authority that the same titles offered fifteen years ago.

Who professionalised, and what they did

While the global names rationalised, the regional and local platforms professionalised. The pattern is most visible in four institutions, each of which has, in the period since roughly 2020, run a senior-talent build-out of a kind that did not exist in the previous decade.

Emirates NBD has, since 2022, invested in senior hiring across investment banking, private banking and wealth management at a scale that has materially changed the bank's senior-layer profile. The hiring has drawn from the regional offices of HSBC, Standard Chartered and Citi as the primary external pool, and from the senior layers of the smaller regional banks (Mashreq, ADIB and the Sharjah, Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah banks) as the secondary pool. The investment in the senior layer has been visible in the bank's strategic positioning and in the regional press; the underlying hiring intensity has been less reported but is, in our practice's tracking, among the most substantial senior-banking-talent investments of any institution in the region.

First Abu Dhabi Bank has gone through a generational CEO transition in the post-2022 period and has, in parallel, rebuilt the senior layer below the CEO across corporate banking, private banking and asset management. The bank's senior-layer profile in 2026 is substantially different from the senior-layer profile of 2018, with a meaningful share of the senior team drawn from previous senior roles at the global names. The structural significance is that FAB has substituted itself, in a small but identifiable share of senior banking-career pathways, for the global-name senior platform.

Saudi National Bank, formed through the merger of National Commercial Bank and Samba in 2021, has run a senior-talent integration that, in our experience, has produced a more professionalised senior layer than either pre-merger institution carried separately. The post-merger investment in senior risk, senior corporate and senior private-banking talent has been one of the most consequential single banking-talent integrations in the region's recent history.

Al Rajhi Bank has expanded its wealth-management franchise materially in the post-2020 period, drawing senior wealth-management talent from the regional offices of the global names and from the senior layers of the comparable Saudi banks. The expansion has produced a senior wealth-management layer that, in scale and capability, is substantially closer to the global names' regional senior layer of a decade ago than it is to the same bank's senior layer in 2018.

The pattern across the four institutions is consistent. The local platforms hired the senior international talent that the global names rationalised away. The hiring ladder reversed in a single market cycle. The senior banker considering the next move in 2026 is, in most cases, considering the move toward the regional or local platform on the same terms that the senior banker of 2010 would have considered the move toward the global name; the institutional gravity has shifted.

Three categories of senior banking talent now in motion

The senior banking talent now flowing into the regional and local platforms in the Gulf decomposes into three recognisable categories. Each category has a distinct source, a distinct career-decision pattern, and a distinct set of expectations from the hiring platform.

The global-to-local move is the category that defines the hiring-ladder reversal described above. The senior MD or partner at the global name, in most cases having spent ten to twenty years inside the global firm's senior layer, takes a senior platform-CEO or head-of-function role at the regional or local platform. The motivations are, in most cases, threefold: real P&L ownership of the kind the rationalised global firm no longer offers in the region; the strategic authority that the regional platform's principal stakeholder is willing to delegate; and a total-rewards package that, in cash terms, exceeds the equivalent global-firm package, in part because the regional platform has the freedom to structure compensation against the larger of London or US comparables rather than against a regional benchmark.

The diaspora return is the category that has grown most in the post-2020 period and that, in our view, will be the structural force that shapes the senior banking talent market in the Gulf over the next decade. The pattern is recognisable: the GCC national who left for an undergraduate or master's programme in the United States or the United Kingdom in the late 1990s or 2000s, joined a global firm at the junior layer, built a senior career across two or three global cities over fifteen to twenty years, and, in their forties, considers the return. The motivations are layered: family and life-stage drivers are often material (parents ageing in the region, children at school-age), the strategic standing of the regional platform is now sufficient to make the return a genuine senior-platform move, and the regional pay structure has caught up with the global comparable to a degree that the financial sacrifice the return implied a decade ago has narrowed substantially.

The regional-to-regional transfer is the category that defines the bench at the local platforms. The senior layer at Emirates NBD, FAB, SNB and Al Rajhi includes a meaningful share of operators who built their careers at the comparable regional or local bank and have moved laterally into a step-up role at the larger institution. The pattern is most visible at the head-of-corporate and head-of-private-banking layers, where the lateral motion between the regional banks is now consistent enough that the senior layer of any one of the four institutions, on close inspection, includes alumni of at least two of the others.

What this means for the next five years

The five-year horizon for senior banking talent in the Gulf is, on the evidence in our practice, more visible than it has been at any previous point. Three trajectories anchor the read.

First, the senior banking layer in the Gulf will be, by 2030, substantially more Gulf-domiciled than it is in 2026. The combined effect of the global-name retreat, the local-platform professionalisation, the diaspora return and the regional-to-regional bench-building is to produce a senior layer that is, structurally, regional. The London- or New York-domiciled senior banker covering the Gulf as part of a global career path will, in 2030, be a smaller share of the senior banking population than the Riyadh- or Dubai-domiciled senior banker covering the region as a Gulf-anchored career.

Second, the diversity of the senior banking layer will be substantially more diverse in origin than the previous generation. The senior layer of the 2000s in Gulf banking was, in most cases, dominated by long-tenured UK- and India-trained bankers who had spent two or three decades in the region. The senior layer of 2026 is more diverse: more national operators, more diaspora returnees, more US-trained bankers, more bankers with backgrounds in Singapore and Hong Kong who have made the corridor move. By 2030, on the trajectory now visible, the senior layer will include a meaningful share of senior bankers from origin paths that did not exist in the senior banking population a generation ago.

Third, the global names will retain a presence in the Gulf, but the senior layer of the regional banking market will be local. The senior platform-CEO seat, the senior risk seat, the senior corporate-banking seat at the institutions that define the regional market will, in most cases, be held by senior leaders at the regional or local platforms rather than at the global names. The global names will continue to serve specific senior coverage roles (cross-border M&A, debt-and-equity capital markets, multi-jurisdictional client coverage), but the centre of gravity of the senior banking layer will sit at the regional and local institutions.

For boards searching for a Group CEO of a Gulf bank in 2027, the implication is straightforward. The candidate pool will, in most cases, be senior leaders who have either built their careers entirely in the regional banking sector, made the global-to-local move at some point in the previous decade, or returned through the diaspora channel after a substantial international career. The candidate pool of 2010, the senior international banker who could be persuaded to take a regional rotation, has thinned substantially and will continue to thin. The boards that internalise this and adjust their search mandates accordingly, by widening the pool to the diaspora returnees, by structuring offers against the regional rather than the global benchmark, by treating the senior layer as a regional rather than an international hiring market, will run successful CEO searches. The boards that approach the search assuming the senior international pool of 2010 still exists will, in most cases, run extended searches with disappointing outcomes.

The senior banking talent market in the Gulf has changed shape. The seats the global names used to fill are increasingly being filled by senior bankers whose career path the regional banking market itself has produced. The chair searching for a Group CEO of a Gulf bank in 2027 will be searching, in most cases, in the senior layer of the Gulf banking market rather than in the senior layer of London or New York. That is the reality the talent market now reflects.

JOH Partners runs senior financial-services and banking mandates across the Gulf, the United Kingdom and Singapore. For confidential conversations on senior banking appointments, contact the partners directly.