The Rivoli store in Dubai's financial free zone was once where investment bankers splashed their cash.
Business was brisk for everything from Dh30,000 (US$8,170) Omega watches to Dh100,000 Vertu phones.
"They would place their orders before their bonuses came through," recalls the store manager, Ismail Askari, standing in front of a cabinet displaying a Dh13,000 Montblanc special Mahatma Gandhi edition pen. "Now there are not so many of them," adds the five-year veteran of the store.
Sales at the luxury retailer, located in the basement of The Gate building, have reflected the peaks and troughs of the market and the fortunes of many of the companies with offices in the 13 floors above the shop.
Global investment banks have shed tens of thousands of jobs over the past year while their smaller regional rivals - heavily reliant on stockbroking - struggle to survive.
More job losses are forecast in the industry as the Gulf's big investment banking names rapidly recalibrate their businesses to cope with the shrinking number of share sales, mergers and acquisitions - their traditional bread-and-butter income.
On the way out are the all-singing, all-dancing investment houses of the boom years. On the way in are leaner, meaner and more specialised banks that are being forced to pare costs back to the bone while focusing on more targeted business lines. That ranges from managing the wealth of the super-rich to offering expertise and access to corporate and government debt sales.
"They've got slimmer teams so therefore are being more focused," says Steve Drake, the head of PwC Capital Markets in the Middle East.
In 2007, when Mr Askari began selling diamond-encrusted phones and pens to the big earners working in the Dubai International Financial Centre, the deal-making landscape of the Gulf looked very differentfrom today.
Easy lending, rising stock markets and a strong oil price helped to encourage a flurry of new share listings from companies such as Depa, which helped to build the interior of the Burj Khalifa, and the global ports operator DP World.
Some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions ever to have been completed in the region were also struck at this time.
Emirates Bank International joined with National Bank of Dubai to form Emirates NBD, the country's biggest bank, with assets of more than $76 billion. Beyond the UAE, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation paid $11.6bn for the plastics unit of General Electric.
Stock markets were also riding high. The Dubai Financial Market General Index (DFM) closed that year at 6,000 points - about four times higher than its current level. Last week it stood at about 1,516 points.
The comparatively large brokerage units of the region's investment banks were a great advantage when stock markets were recording double-digit annual growth and new stock issuances were many hundreds of times oversubscribed.
But as prices fell and volumes dwindled, it became their Achilles heel. Capital fled and banks found themselves with large teams of brokers without buy-and-sell orders to process. Their research departments produced reports that investors did not read about stocks that were no longer in their portfolios.
To make matters worse for these brokerages, the practice of margin trading, where investors borrowed from banks to buy more stock, has produced a rash of legal disputes after borrowers found themselves unable to pay for their purchases.
Weak stock markets and falling traded volumes have discouraged companies seeking to raise cash from selling their shares through initial public offerings - one of the key ways investment banks make their money.
The value of regional share sales in the final quarter of last year fell 79 per cent to $212 million compared with the same period a year earlier. The Gulf had nine public offerings last year that raised $789m. The previous year there were 12 such sales that raised more than $2bn, according to data from PwC.
The performance of the UAE's stock markets since the beginning of the year has stirred hopes of a reawakening of the dormant IPO sector and potentially more mandates for the investment banks that help to arrange such sales. The DFM has risen by about 12 per cent since the beginning of the year as the public has returned to buying and selling shares at a time of year when companies typically reward their investors with dividends.
But one swallow may not make a summer, and the only substantial IPO activity to be seen this year is expected to emerge from Saudi Arabia, where a $130bn government spending plan is helping to prime the pump for new stock issuances.
"The amount of mandates we are seeing for Saudi IPOs has picked up," says Mr Drake, who is aware of about 10 Saudi share sales currently in the pipeline, primarily involving family-run groups.
"It reflects an optimism that they'll be able to get the valuations and level of cash that they're looking for. What has yet to be put to the test is whether investors have the same view."
With the government economic stimulus measures, Saudi Arabia may emerge as a rare bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global industry that continues to announce large-scale job losses.
Last month Royal Bank of Scotland announced 4,800 job cuts, including 3,500 from its investment banking division. Société Générale is cutting about 1,500 positions as it trims bonuses paid to its investment bankers. Macquarie, Australia's largest investment bank, last week said it would cut about 10 per cent of its Asian investment bank workforce. Other groups including Nomura and Deutsche Bank have also made cuts.
The industry is also contracting across the Middle East. Shuaa Capital, seen as the largest investment bank in the UAE, reported a fourth year of losses this week and more job cuts. Its rival Rasmala Holdings has turned to an outside investor for help in funding its business.
The bank, which is expected to report losses of about $7m for the last financial year, is receiving a $16m injection from the European Islamic Investment Bank, while it cuts costs and restructures its operations. Egypt's EFG-Hermes is also cutting costs and trimming executive pay after a steep decline in its brokerage business was exacerbated by last year's revolution in the country.
Yet despite the deteriorating market, not all Gulf investment banks are in cost-cutting mode.
Dubai-based Arqaam Capital last month agreed to buy Egypt's Rashad Securities Brokerage to tap into a recovery in the Egyptian economy. "We're in the process of adding capacity and building out our business at a time when many other institutions are taking capacity out of the market or shrinking their businesses," says Tarek Lotfy, the managing director of capital markets at Arqaam.
His company has carved out a niche hooking up international institutional investors with fixed-income debt products, which has meant it has been less exposed to the fallout from the collapse of equity markets.
"We focused on fixed income as an asset class - connecting an international client base with regional opportunities. That has grown and matured into a significant business," he says.
Back at the DIFC Rivoli store, Mr Askari stands at his shop entrance and points next door to a unit that used to be home to a De Beers diamond store. The space is now occupied by a Häagen-Dazs ice cream store.
"They haven't even changed the furniture," Mr Askari says of the cabinets that once displayed solitaire rings and necklaces but now support tubs of chocolate-chip and vanilla-flavoured frozen fare.
The old Porsche Design outlet has also gone, replaced by a cupcake shop. A hairdresser occupies the unit that used to be Paris Gallery, the upmarket perfume and cosmetics store.
The boutique retailers in the basement have been forced to adapt to the changing market. Now the boutique banks upstairs are doing the same.
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