Trusts have also become a major player in property development this year, after bank lending to the sector was curtailed by regulators wary of a bubble forming.
These are boom times for intellectual property lawyers, as every major player in the mobile phone industry decides that patents are important weapons in the battle for supremacy in the smartphone market.
Strategically focused patent portfolio development is a key process in protecting intellectual property and one that may enable a smaller player to have relatively large leverage in an industry, because it can obtain an asset of value to a competitor.
The bank, under the guidance of its top executives, Ferozi and Sherkhan Farnood, a world-class poker player, had begun to founder, in part owing to the collapse of the property market in Dubai.