Bahrain's central bank said on Tuesday it is taking steps to close down Iranian-owned Future Bank, which is based in the Gulf state, Reuters reported. On Monday, Ebtisam al-Arrayed, head of regulatory policy at the central bank, told Reuters that the regulator had yet to make a decision about Future Bank after placing it under its administration last year, along with Iran Insurance Co - the Bahrain branch of an Iranian insurer. At that time the regulator said the moves were to "protect the rights of depositors and policyholders".

In the days of the commodity boom a few years ago, oil-rich nations and their petrodollar wealth were the darlings of the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg News reported. A panel that included Kuwaiti, Saudi and Russian sovereign-wealth fund officials was one the hottest tickets at Davos in January 2008, just before oil prices surged to $150 a barrel. It was a time when crude producers were accumulating billions of dollars in debt and equities, plus real estate, sports teams and other trophy assets.

Saudi Arabia is considering selling shares in refining ventures with foreign oil firms but would not offer a stake in the crude oil exploration and production operations of state oil giant Saudi Aramco, sources familiar with official thinking said, Bloomberg News reported. Some Aramco managers have been informed that the company is looking at listing shares in "joint downstream subsidiaries" at home and abroad, the sources said. One option is to create a holding company that would group together Aramco's stakes in the downstream subsidiaries, one source said.

Saudi Arabia is considering selling shares in its state-owned oil company, a move that comes amid a broad privatization effort afoot in the kingdom, but also at a vulnerable time for Riyadh because of tumbling energy prices, The Wall Street Journal reported. Any move to list shares in Saudi Arabian Oil Co., better known as Saudi Aramco, would almost assuredly be limited in scale, and could exclude its strategic production assets altogether.

Saudi Arabia today unveiled spending cuts in its 2016 budget, subsidy reforms and a call for privatizations to rein in a yawning deficit caused by the prolonged period of low oil prices, the Financial Times reported today. The Gulf kingdom has kept oil production at high levels in an attempt to force out higher-cost producers, such as shale, and retain its market share. But this year’s deficit ballooned to 367bn Saudi riyals ($97.9bn,) or 15 percent of gross domestic product, as oil revenues fell 23 percent to Sr444.5bn.

Saudi insolvency law has for some time been something of an unknown quantity for non-Saudis, The National Law Review reported. A wide-ranging reform is due to take effect in 2016, which will express elements of the rescue culture and is likely to make restructurings more common. Increased certainty in the outcome of insolvencies will benefit both Saudi businesses and domestic and foreign creditors alike.

Banks facing a surge in defaults on small company loans are closing off credit to the sector in the United Arab Emirates, in a sign of the increasingly brittle business confidence in the Gulf amid a sustained slump in oil prices, the Financial Times reported. AbdulAziz al Ghurair, head of the UAE Banks Federation, estimated loans to small and medium-sized enterprises totalling between Dh5bn and Dh7bn ($1.36bn-$1.9bn) were at risk of default after the country’s national body that pools information on banks’ loan exposure revealed over-borrowing by SMEs.

Saudi Arabia has decided to tap international bond markets for the first time, in a sign of the damage lower oil prices are inflicting on its public finances, the Financial Times reported. Saudi officials say the kingdom could increase debt levels to as much as 50 per cent of gross domestic product within five years, up from a forecasted 6.7 per cent this year and 17.3 per cent in 2016. Work on finalising the bond programme is likely to start in January, according to a senior official.

A softening in the United Arab Emirates' economy has led to a surge in small and medium-sized businesses defaulting on debt, dragging on banks' performance and highlighting the need for a new bankruptcy law, Reuters reported. In a country where a bounced cheque risks landing the issuer in jail, there have been hundreds of recent cases of expatriate business owners fleeing the country, or "skipping", with unpaid debts, banking sources say. Others who remain have defaulted on debt and in some cases been arrested.

The IMF has asked Saudi Arabia for more details of its plans to deal with its ballooning fiscal deficit, warning the world’s biggest oil producer could deplete its financial reserves within five years unless it builds on efforts to balance the budget, the Financial Times reported. Masood Ahmed, the IMF’s regional director, pressed Riyadh to outline details of its proposed spending cuts and clarify its position on additional revenue generation measures such as taxes, as it deals with a fiscal deficit hovering around 20 per cent this year and next.