Regional Roundup

In this edition: consumer confidence is high in the UAE, Kuwait's Investment Dar is in default, and sovereign wealth funds are said to be pulling back.

• Consumer confidence in the UAE drops. But the UAE remains among the top ten countries in the world in terms of confidence, according to new figures from Nielsen.

• Kuwait's Investment Dar, which owns half of Aston Martin, has defaulted on a $100m sukuk. It is, by some accounts, the first time a sukuk in the Gulf has gone into default. I've heard there have been others, however.

• Sovereign wealth funds "reticent" (shouldn't that be "reluctant"?) about taking risk now. They're sticking to long-term investment strategies, some people say, but they may have lost 20 or 30 per cent in 2008, if they put up numbers similar to those posted by Norway's über-transparent fund.