Capping appetite

Sovereign wealth funds are going cap in hand… to themselves. The Gulf International bank is raising $1bn to offset losses related to US subprime. Yet unlike the Western banks that have had suffered heavily, GIB didn’t have to go far – the Bahrain-based lender is jointly owned by the six governments of the Gulf Co-operation Council, most of which have already spent billions bailing out Western banks. The Gulf home rescue – in which the bank is more than doubling its capital base to $2.5bn – show...