DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — As the world’s banking system began to quake last year, secretive sovereign wealth funds from the Arab Gulf and elsewhere rushed in to provide billions of dollars in badly needed funding.
Now Wall Street needs an even longer lifeline. But so far, at least, the heads of Middle Eastern pools of state oil money seem unwilling to pull the checkbook back out.
“It’s probably ‘once bitten, twice shy,’ ” said Eckart Woertz, program manager for economics at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.
Indeed, the multibillion-dollar investments funds in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait made within the past year seem to have failed to pay off so far — although the firms insist they are long-term investors willing to weather a bumpy ride in the short term.
Meanwhile, a representative from the Kuwait Investment Authority on Monday denied a report that the fund was meeting to reconsider the big stake it took in Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. earlier this year.
