Emerging market growth is changing the strategy for the commodities business at the same time that tighter regulation is altering the relationship between banks, merchant traders and investment funds.

An increasing number of financial institutions from international banks to local specialist players are developing sharia-compliant structured products, offering investors limited downside risk and high returns. But as the uptake for such products increases, so does the pressure of ensuring that they are 100% sharia-friendly.

With significant potential for growth in the country's real estate, retail and capital markets, Saudi Arabia's banks, which are already highly liquid and rapidly increasing their profitability, are making bold projections for their future successes.

Local banks in the Middle East have continued to perform strongly despite the global financial downturn. The strategies of three such institutions – state-owned National Bank of Abu Dhabi, local-owned Qatar National Bank and retail franchise Emirates NBD – help to explain such a strong performance.

The Lebanese banking sector witnessed slow growth in the first half of 2011, as political paralysis gripped the entire economy. The re-election of Riad Salameh as central bank governor helped boost activity in the latter half of the year, but with the country's political situation and the global economic climate still threatening to trouble Lebanese banks, how does he intend to stimulate growth throughout 2012?

Having endured an eventful recent past that includes a civil war, involvement in Middle East disputes and weathering the crisis in neighbouring Syria, Lebanon’s robust financial sector is growing at what the industry believes is a healthy pace. And with its banks highly liquid and well placed for the implementation of Basel III, good economic growth is forecast for 2012.

Efforts by the Kuwaiti government to boost the country’s sluggish economic growth have so far proven ineffective, leaving its banks to look towards the rest of the Middle East and north Africa for growth opportunities.

Armed with deep pools of liquidity, many Middle Eastern banks are exploring new avenues of growth, from expanding their regional presence to concentrating on innovation within the Islamic finance sphere.

Now Kuwait has joined many other Gulf states in pushing through private financing across a range of sectors and overhauling its infrastructure, it boasts one of the Middle East's largest and most diverse public-private partnership programmes. But as the country's government opts for PPPs, will the banks follow?