When the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China became the first Chinese bank to open a subsidiary in the Middle East, it was touted as a significant step towards expanding overseas and promoting an “internationalisation strategy”.

Yet market watchers could have been forgiven for thinking the timing was inopportune. In spite of rapidly growing trade ties between the oil-rich Gulf and energy-hungry China over the past decade, ICBC opened its office only in October 2008. That was just one month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers – an event that dramatically shook confidence across the region and dashed notions of the Gulf decoupling from the global economic crisis.

However, Tian Zhiping, ICBC’s president for the Middle East, seems relieved to have missed the excesses that characterised those years, arguing that the bank has enjoyed the advantage of starting in the region with a clean slate.