DUBAI (Bloomberg) — Christopher Laing, a managing director at Deutsche Bank AG in London, moved with his wife and twin boys to Dubai this month, joining a rush to the only region in the world where fees earned by securities firms are growing.

"It's bigger than it has ever been," said Laing, 39, co-head of equity capital markets for central and eastern Europe, the Mideast and Africa, referring to the number of public offerings on the horizon. "I'm lucky it was my choice to move."

Laing joins scores of rival bankers, including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s Makram Azar, Citigroup Inc.'s Alberto Verme and Morgan Stanley's David Law, who have left London in recent months in search of deals. The attraction: an oil-rich patch that may have $5 trillion in sovereign wealth funds by 2015, according to International Financial Services London.

Fees earned by securities firms in the Middle East rose five percent to $612 million in the first half of the year, the only part of the world to show growth, according to New York-based research firm Freeman & Co. While it accounts for less than two percent of global investment banking fees, the region accounts for twice as big a share of the pie as it did a year ago.

Among the larger deals in the last 12 months are the $4.96 billion initial shares sale of DP World Ltd., the Dubai-owned ports operator, and about $18 billion of investments by Persian Gulf states sovereign funds and companies in foreign banks, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch & Co., according to Bloomberg data.

"The Gulf is being flooded with trillions in petrodollars," said Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics and a consultant to the World Bank. "Dubai has emerged as the location of choice for foreign bankers."

Bankers relocating to Dubai, which is in the United Arab Emirates, can look forward to tax-free salaries and higher bonuses — as much as 25 percent more than those in Europe and the US, says Jon Duckfield, head of the Dubai office of recruitment firm Options Group.

"Those fortunate to be working there in any financial discipline will probably enjoy a better bonus than their European counterparts in 2009," said Shaun Springer, chief executive officer of Napier Scott Executive Search Ltd..

Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, UBS AG and Morgan Stanley have doubled the number of bankers based in the Middle East to more than 400 this year. That growth is in contrast to London and New York, where banks have announced more than 100,000 job cuts in the past year, investment banking revenue shows no sign of rebounding and the pace of takeovers has sunk to a three-year low.