The Iran war has reached the gleaming towers of Dubai's financial district. Citigroup and Standard Chartered have begun evacuating their Dubai offices and directing staff to work from home, while HSBC has closed all its branches in Qatar until further notice — moves triggered by Iran's explicit threat to target economic and banking interests in the Gulf linked to the US and Israel,
Reuters reported, citing sources and documents seen by the agency.
The evacuations mark a significant escalation in the war's impact on global financial infrastructure, striking at the heart of a region that international banks have spent two decades and billions of dollars building into a cornerstone of their global strategies.
Citigroup sent a memo to employees — seen by Reuters — directing staff to evacuate offices in both the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and its Oud Metha neighbourhood location, with instructions to work from home until further notice. A Citigroup spokesperson confirmed with Reuters that the bank was taking measures to keep staff safe and had contingency plans in place to ensure business continuity.
Standard Chartered (StanChart), which makes nearly 6% of its overall income in the UAE according to company filings and has, in recent years, increasingly based senior executives in the region, also began evacuating Dubai office staff.
HSBC, meanwhile, issued a customer notice closing all its Qatar branches until further notice, citing the safety of staff and customers. Goldman Sachs employees across the region moved to work-from-home arrangements following local official instructions, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
According to media reports, Deloitte evacuated offices in Dubai's financial centre, while PwC closed offices across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait, underscoring that the disruption extended well beyond banking into the broader professional services ecosystem that underpins Gulf financial activity.
The evacuations followed a statement from a spokesperson for Tehran's Khatam al-Anbiya military command headquarters, who says Iran would target economic and banking interests linked to the US and Israel in the region, a threat issued in retaliation for an attack on an Iranian bank.
An administrative building linked to Bank Sepah, one of Iran's largest public banks and one with historical connections to the military, was struck overnight in Tehran, Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
The threat gave concrete shape to fears that the war, which has already disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, shut the Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi, forced widespread flight cancellations, and triggered drone strikes on Gulf industrial facilities, is now moving into a new phase targeting the financial and commercial infrastructure that underpins the Gulf's role as a global economic hub.
The evacuations come as JPMorgan analysts identified HSBC and Standard Chartered as the European banks most financially exposed to the Middle East conflict, Reuters reported.
JPMorgan estimated that the region accounts for around 8% of Standard Chartered's revenue and 12% of its profit before tax — a significant concentration for a bank that has staked much of its recent strategic identity on the Asia-Middle East corridor.
For HSBC, Middle East exposure stands at around 4% of both revenue and profit before tax, rising to nearly 9% when Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are included.
JPMorgan warned that rising energy prices could place additional strain on corporate borrowers in the region, particularly in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and transport, increasing the risk that companies struggle to service debt, which in turn raises credit risk for banks with significant corporate lending exposure in the Gulf.
Despite the branch closures and the JPMorgan warning, HSBC's chief executive officer (CEO) Georges Elhedery struck a notably confident tone. In some of the first public comments from an international bank boss since the crisis escalated, Mr Elhedery says the bank's "conviction in the GCC's fundamentals and its future is unchanged," Reuters reported.
"HSBC remains steadfast in our confidence in the GCC and in the long-term strength, resilience and promise of the region. We continue to believe that the years ahead will bring renewed stability, growth, and prosperity," he says in a statement.
The evacuations deal a reputational blow to Dubai at a particularly sensitive moment. The Dubai International Financial Centre, established in 2004 as the cornerstone of the emirate's push to attract global financial firms, had by end-2025 grown to host more than 290 banks, 102 hedge funds, 500 wealth management firms, and 1,289 family-related entities, the culmination of Dubai's decades-long transformation from a modest fishing port into a major global financial hub.
That carefully constructed image of stability and reliability is now under strain. Reuters reported last week that the war had already dented Dubai's pitch to international businesses as the region's most dependable economic centre, prompting concerns about capital flight, potential layoffs, and firms considering relocating operations elsewhere.
For HSBC and Standard Chartered, two banks that have invested heavily in positioning the Gulf as a strategic bridge between Asia and the rest of the world, the timing could hardly be worse. The Gulf remains a relatively small slice of their overall balance sheets, but it punches well above its weight in trade finance, transaction banking, and client access. Losing even temporary operational capacity in Dubai and Doha at a moment when global clients are watching closely is a setback neither bank needed.
