Carne Global positions itself to advise ultra-wealth Gulf-regions families. Carne Global Financial Services, a Dublin-based consultancy to traditional and alternative fund-managers and private-client firms around the world, has opened an office in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) "to capitalize on [the city's] position as a leading domicile for wealth management" and "to serve the needs of the growing GCC investment community," the firm says in a press release.

The acronym GCC stands for "Gulf Cooperation Council," the customs union and common market of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the U.A.E.

"Carne has had a presence in the Gulf region for some years, advising key investment industry clients, private banks and family offices," says the firm's CEO John Donohoe. "Due to increasing demand for advice on all aspects of establishing fund structures, now is the right time to establish ourselves here on a permanent basis."

Carne last month opened an office in George Town on the Cayman Islands to provide advice to fund- and wealth-management companies "based in one of the world's leading offshore domiciles," according to an earlier press release.

Inland Northwest to the Persian Gulf

Experts in Carne's Dubai office will offer advice on the investment-fund business through all phases and other related matters, just as Carne Global staffers do from the firm's offices in London, Geneva and Luxembourg as well as in Dublin and the Cayman Islands.

Carne has hired Robert Law, formerly general counsel for Spokane, Wash.-based money manager ICM Asset Management, to run its Dubai office. He'll work with Gary Shelley -- most recently a project manager with ABN Amro Asset Management and before that a business analyst with State Street. They'll collaborate with Phil Kitto, London-based head of Carne's wealth-management practice, and John Skelly, the firm's Dublin-based investment-compliance expert.

Law says he expects to see significant growth for Carne from its Dubai-based operations -- particularly from the region's growing family-office segment.

In 2006 assets held by Middle Easterners with at least $1 million in financial assets increased 11.7%, according to Merrill Lynch's and Capgemini's 2007 World Wealth Report. That put the Middle East ahead of Asia-Pacific's, North America's and Europe's rates of personal-wealth creation among millionaires that year. The Middle East's population of high-net-worth individuals saw a year-over-year increase of 11.9% to about 300,000 in 2006.

But these statistics convey an inadequate sense of the per-capita wealth on hand on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf; the oil-rich but sparsely populated sliver of the Middle East Carne has drawn a bead on.

Though moves into the Gulf region have slowed over the past year or so, Carne venture into the area. A clutch of off-shore players showed up there in the last half of 2007, ncluding ING Investment Management,