According to Dr. Gil Feiler, businessman and author, the number of Arab wealthy individuals with liquidity in excess of US$ 1 million is 306,000 as of mid 2008. Most of them are resident of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar). According to Dr. Feiler\'s analysis, these businesspersons\' total wealth was US$ 93 billion by the end of June 2008. Dr. Feiler found out that most of these wealthy Arabs prefer to channels their wealth mainly to Western banks rather than to Islamic Financial institutions. According to Feiler, the number of Arab millionaires has increased significantly mainly due to the oil revenues boom.

(This article was taken from the prestigious FT GMM database)