Ex-Barclays Chief Bob Diamond Bets on Gulf With New Bahrain Office

Panmure Liberum, the U.K. advisory firm controlled by former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, is opening its first office in the Gulf region — in Bahrain — even as war-related tensions simmer across the Middle East. Diamond announced the move from Bahrain during the Gateway Gulf investment conference, and he dismissed any suggestion that the conflict has frozen regional business.

"The region isn't hiding in their bunker; they're doing business," Diamond told Fortune on a call from the kingdom. The backdrop is uneasy: tensions around the U.S. midterms and the possibility that the President may restart attacks on Iran. Diamond acknowledged the risk, but only up to a point.

"I don't want to be dismissive, there is a war, there is a conflict, whatever term you want to use," he said. "It's real, and I'm not going to be dismissive of the impact that's having on the UAE, on Bahrain, on Qatar. But I will tell you, if you take the time to get here and you're on the ground, it's business as usual. The kids are in school. People are working from the office. They're not hiding at home. They're doing business. They're investing."

Why buy an advisory firm at all?

The Bahrain office sits on a deal history Diamond assembled over nearly a decade. His investment vehicle, Atlas Merchant Capital, bought Panmure Gordon for £15.5 million ($21 million) in 2017 — a modest sum for a name that once carried weight in the City. In 2024, the firm agreed an all-share merger with Liberum.

The combined Panmure Liberum now ranks among the biggest advisors to U.K.-listed companies by client count, with more than 250 clients. It focuses on mid-market companies valued below the range served by bulge-bracket banks such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. That positioning is precisely what Diamond wants to export to the Gulf.

What is happening to UK dealmaking?

The timing is hard to argue with, at least on the numbers Diamond cites. U.K. deal activity fell 13% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to PwC. The Gulf, by contrast, is generating deal flow that London currently cannot match.

"You have all the talent in the world in London. It's still a very attractive place for a lot of people," Diamond said. "The skill set of advisory is very, very deep. But there's not a lot of deals. I think the statistics on the number of companies that have gone public or raised equity is paltry compared to what it used to be, and they're losing out not to Frankfurt or Dublin, but to the U.S. and, more and more, to the Middle East."

For Diamond, the U.K. slowdown is an opening rather than an obstacle. "It means that we can build an advisory business here in Bahrain to serve middle market and family-owned businesses, which are dying for cover," he said. "And we can then expand that to the Gulf Cooperation Council."

What does Bahrain offer beyond location?

Bahrain, one of the smaller kingdoms in the region, pitches itself to investors on agility and clear, simple regulatory rules. Other announcements at Gateway Gulf lent the pitch some substance:

• Mastercard expanded its deal with Bahrain-based fintech firm Infinios to facilitate business-to-business travel payments.
• Olayan Kimberly-Clark, the partnership between Saudi Arabia and the tissue-production giant, said it would expand production at its Bahrain paper mill.

Diamond framed regulation, not its absence, as Bahrain's selling point. "It's a highly regulated banking sector," he said. "Great banks want great regulation. It's also a gateway, to steal a phrase from the conference, to the GCC. So all of a sudden, Panmure, which is a U.K.-focused advisory business, is now U.K. and GCC, so we're very happy with it."

He also sees opportunity for Bahrain and the wider Gulf in stablecoin payment systems, which he called one of the fastest ways to reduce the cost of doing business. A stablecoin, as a digital currency pegged to the dollar, is viewed as a more secure way to settle transactions.

"Tokenization is just digitizing assets," Diamond said. "It's making them more efficient. All of that relies on blockchain, which is an underpinning of 24/7 instantaneous settlement, a permanent record of every transaction. So, the regulators love it, at a fraction of the cost. It is going to be the future underpinning [for finance]. It's infrastructure."

Diamond is making a straightforward wager: that deal flow migrates faster than conflict escalates. The first test comes quickly, with a GCC expansion plan that depends on regional stability holding through a volatile U.S. political season.