In 2008, as mountains of bad debt collapsed and economies around the world crumbled, carefree gamblers at the central bank-owned Casino du Liban rolled dice and spun roulette wheels, the Financial Times reported. Unscathed by the global financial crisis, Beirut glittered as the Middle East’s party capital and purveyor of discreet financial services. Lebanon offered wealthy investors something they could not get elsewhere — high interest rates for low risk investments.

Lebanon’s central bank governor has suggested he’s struggling to contain the divergence of the pound from its peg to the dollar as the country faces its worst financial crisis in decades, Bloomberg News reported. “No one knows,” Riad Salameh said, when asked how much further the pound would depreciate on the black market. “When I spoke in the past, the dollar hadn’t reached 2,000 pounds,” he said, according to the state-run National News Agency. The pound has been pegged at 1,507.5 to the dollar since 1997.

If 2019 was the year when a clutch of Middle East markets burst into the mainstream, then 2020 will test whether the foreign money keeps flooding in. The year opened with five Gulf Arab economies joining JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s emerging-market bond indexes, Bloomberg News reported. The spotlight stayed firmly on the region as Saudi Aramco’s $12 billion international bond debut in April was followed by preparations for its historic public offering at the end of the year. Gulf dollar bonds outperformed their emerging-market peers with returns of 15% this year.

Lebanon, a politically troubled but upper middle-income Middle Eastern state, is in the midst of a deep financial and political crisis. Banks have been intermittently closed since mid-October and depositors across the country are finding it impossible to gain access to dollar balances, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. While capital controls have not officially been introduced, it seems banks have taken it upon themselves to conserve liquidity and capital by dictating what level of funds clients can withdraw or transfer abroad.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri said he discussed with the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank a possible plan to ease a deepening financial crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Eurobonds rose after Hariri’s office said on Twitter that he asked the two institutions for technical assistance for the plan, which he said would be implemented by a new government. He also asked the World Bank for help in securing trade finance to prevent any shortages of essential goods.

Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction company overhauled its top management, delaying plans to appoint an adviser for a proposed $15 billion debt restructuring, people familiar with the matter said, Bloomberg News reported. Saudi Binladin Group’s previous chairman and managing director left within months of being appointed, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter hasn’t been made public. The company also named four new directors to its board this week, they said.

Lebanon’s central bank on Wednesday dramatically lowered interest rates on dollar and Lebanese pound deposits and loans — the latest measure to shore up the country’s banking system amid a burgeoning economic crisis, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Banque de Liban also announced that for the next six months it would pay 50% of the interest it owes banks on dollar deposits and deposit certificates in Lebanese pounds— a move that would also ease the demand on the dollar.

Courier app Fetchr, once one of the Middle East’s largest startups, raised as much as $10 million in emergency funding to help avoid collapse, Bloomberg News reported. The Dubai-based company, which offers delivery and logistics services to e-commerce firms, is also in the process of securing as much as $25 million in additional funding to turn the company around, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Lebanon’s central bank plans to slash interest rates in an attempt to ease the country’s economic crisis and is considering formalizing temporary capital controls set individually by local lenders, Bloomberg News reported. Governor Riad Salameh told the Association of Banks in Lebanon that he will issue a circular within days to lower rates “to revive the economy” and limit the increase in “doubtful” loans, according to a document summarizing the meeting and seen by Bloomberg.