Wall St.'s Denizens Look East

But as financial crises build, growing numbers of Americans are overcoming that reluctance and sending résumés to Dubai, the Saudi capital of Riyadh and other Middle East hubs, headhunters and financial executives said.

"A lot of people are realizing that their jobs are in jeopardy or their jobs are gone," Johnson said, and that this is "the time to make a move where things are happening."

Across the board, headhunters and executives here said they have seen a marked increase in the number of Americans interested in the Persian Gulf.

Six months ago, "we were begging people" within the firm to relocate here, said Oliver Holder, managing director of Deloitte Corporate Finance in Britain. "Now we have a choice."

For employers, it is a buyers' market. The number of investment bankers and others applying for financial jobs here is rising, even as financial firms in the Persian Gulf, feeling the global pain, trim or freeze hiring.

Headhunters and job-seekers tell of Gulf executives cutting salary proposals or rescinding job offers as they realize they can afford to be picky.

Many of those being sought for work here have experience in the Middle East. Makram Azar, a former executive for the now-bankrupt firm Lehman Brothers who is based in the Gulf, was hired last month by the New York-based equity group Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. to lead the company's expansion in the Middle East and Africa. Some other former Lehman executives have landed in Singapore and points further east of Dubai.

Deweesh, the vice president of the Amwal al-Khaleej investment company who has been hearing from old U.S. college buddies, said talented American financial professionals with good reputations will still generate interest here, despite disenchantment with U.S. financial and political policies. Sloan and Johnson say the same.

But while the newly hired and the hopeful are coming here from Britain, Switzerland, France and elsewhere, Americans remain thin on the ground.

Those who seek to move here will have to overcome several stereotypes about Americans, people here warn: that Americans don't know very much about the world, that their style in business negotiations tends to be too aggressive, that they demand high salaries and that they have trouble adjusting to life overseas.

Too often with Americans, it's "I don't know anything about the Middle East; can I have a job?" said the American banker, who has become less inclined to hire his countrymen.

"Americans like more infrastructure, don't they?" said one British sales manager who, until recently, was based in New York. Dismayed by the financial downturn there, he had just accepted a job in Dubai. He stopped in London long enough to hire a 10-person, all-British sales team to bring with him. "I mean, this isn't the West Village, is it?" he said.

Special correspondent Karla Adam in London and staff writer Nancy Trejos in Washington contributed to this report.