By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Bathed in the glow of the skyline’s glitter, the centerpiece of Dubai’s financial hub seems equal to the thrusting ambitions of the foreign investment bankers rushing to set up shop here.
“This is the new Wall Street - it’s the center of gravity, said Fares Noujaim, Merrill Lynch’s new president of the company’s business in the Middle East and North Africa, pointing up at the main building of the Dubai International Financial Center that covers the sky above him.
Called the Gate, it seems more a giant slab of modern art than an office building.
The Dubai boom has been riding oil’s ascent for years now. Its ultramodern skyline, which barely existed little more than a decade ago, has become a prominent symbol of the emergence of this once scrubby emirate on the western coast of the Persian Gulf as the Middle East’s principal financial, trade and tourism center.
But as the deepening bite of the credit crisis spreads from Wall Street and takes a global toll - torpedoing once-buoyant markets from Shanghai to Stockholm - the Gate has recently become an even more powerful beacon for a swarm of deal makers looking to stake their claim in one of the world’s last remaining bull markets.
The numbers are staggering. Dubai’s economic growth is running at roughly 11 percent a year and the government expects it to continue at that pace. Housing prices spiked 42 percent in the first three months of the year.
Even though it has little oil of its own, Dubai’s welcoming social and investment climate, along with special zones with independent laws, has turned it into a massive trading center , beyond Beirut in the 1970s and Hong Kong in the 1980s.
Economists warn of an unmanaged boom, as high inflation, a weakening currency and rampant construction stoke fears of a severe reversal to come.
But for Mr. Noujaim, such concerns are for another day. “Bubble? What bubble?’ Mr. Noujaim asked, pressing his case that the global demand for oil, despite the recent dip in prices, would push its value even higher. “This will be the next Singapore or Hong Kong.
Earlier this decade, multiple trips to China became the de rigueur assignment among Wall Street chief executives panning for rich overseas deals.
Now it is the Middle East: John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs have been here several times since the latest boom erupted a few years ago. Richard S. Fuld Jr. of Lehman Brothers has come once and John A. Thain, who took over at Merrill last year, is scheduled to arrive this fall.
Morgan Stanley highlights its 42 Dubaibased investment bankers and a flourishing office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Citigroup has recently moved its co-head of investment banking, Alberto Verme, to the region; Deutsche Bank and UBS are sending bankers over in bundles; and Goldman Sachs has sent a top fixed-income ally of Mr. Blankfein’s to plant the firm’s flag.
And Barclay’s wealth management unit, Global Investors, recently established an office in the financial center here.
For the corporate executives in the region, the question is this: Will Merrill, Morgan and Goldman be here when the inevitable correction comes?
To listen to Georges Makhoul, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley’s Middle East business, the answer is a resounding yes. Morgan Stanley arrived here in 2005 and became one of the first American banks to establish a presence. “We have over 150 people in the region, he said. That is an example of making the right bets.
It is not just a march of bankers - Dubai lures as many as 20,000 new people a month, a number that includes large numbers of workers from the South Asian subcontinent who make the bankers’ beds in hotels and drive them around in the cool comfort of their Mercedes (about 90 percent of Dubai’s population of 1.4 million is foreign).
“We, too, come here for the money, said Mosrallah Khan, who works a 12-hour day as a taxi driver to earn enough to send home to his family in Peshawar, Pakistan.
When night falls, the deal making continues even as the action shifts from the board room to the many bars and nightclubs located in the city’s hotels.
“Look at all this growth, said Mr. Noujaim, as he sat immobile in a traffic jam in Riyadh in June, surrounded by skyscrapers, some recently completed, others still under construction. “This could be America 100 years ago.