North Africa/Middle East

Dana Gas PJSC bondholders, including BlackRock Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., submitted a proposal to the Middle Eastern energy producer to resolve a dispute over a $700 million sukuk that shocked the Islamic finance industry this year, Bloomberg News reported. A person close to the company said the terms aren’t acceptable. The deal, which has support from over 70 percent of sukukholders, includes a cash pay-down of $300 million at par and a dual-listing of the company’s shares on the London Stock Exchange, the ad hoc committee of bondholders said in a statement.

To see how far Dubai has come, take a look at its credit default swaps. The extra cost investors pay to insure the sheikhdom’s bonds versus those of its oil-rich neighbor, Abu Dhabi, has fallen below 60 basis points this month for the first time on record, Bloomberg News reported. That’s down from 555 basis points back in 2009, when Dubai’s government-related companies were in talks to restructure billions of dollars in debt and Abu Dhabi came to the emirate’s rescue with a bailout. Dubai is a rare example of a Gulf economy that doesn’t rely almost entirely on oil revenue to fund expansion.

Qatar is telling its banks to tap international investors to raise financing, instead of mainly relying on government funding, as the impact of the ongoing Saudi-led boycott puts pressure on liquidity, the Irish Times reported. The central bank is holding regular meetings with lenders to gauge how the standoff is affecting liquidity, and is encouraging banks to borrow internationally through bonds and loans to avoid further depletion of foreign reserves and credit-rating downgrades, said sources who asked not to be identified because the matter was private.

Solarworld, a former stock market darling that became one of the biggest casualties of Germany’s ill-fated solar boom, has been resurrected from insolvency with the help of investors from Qatar, the Financial Times reported. The company has agreed to sell its key assets — including its two manufacturing plants in Germany — for about €100m to a Qatari-German joint venture set up by Frank Asbeck, the founder of Solarworld, and Qatar Solar Technologies. The new company, Solarworld Industries, was formally unveiled in Berlin on Thursday.

Frank Asbeck, founder and former CEO of SolarWorld, has teamed up with Qatar to buy two of the insolvent panel maker's factories, sources familiar with the matter said. Qatar was a shareholder in SolarWorld with a stake of 29 percent before its collapse, while Asbeck held 21 percent, Reuters reported. The plants, located in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia, will be taken over by a new investment vehicle called SolarWorld Industries GmbH, which counts Asbeck and the Qatar Foundation as its owners, the sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

The standoff between Dana Gas PJSC and its bondholders took a fresh twist after the Middle Eastern energy explorer that’s trying to void $700 million of its own debt was said to believe investors may even have to pay the company, Bloomberg News reported. The Sharjah-based gas producer says a court battle with holders of the Islamic securities, or sukuk, may see it having to return less than 10 percent of the amount it borrowed, according to a person familiar with Dana Gas’s own analysis.

Dana Gas PJSC won an extension of a London court order blocking investors from taking action over $700 million in disputed Islamic bonds until after a trial scheduled for as soon as October, Bloomberg News reported. Dana, which has operations in Egypt and Iraq, sent shockwaves through the world of Islamic finance by announcing in June that its own sukuk were not Shariah compliant. The U.K. court hearings are part of a global legal effort by the company, including filings in the United Arab Emirates and British Virgin Islands, to stop investors from trying to force payment.

Net foreign assets at Saudi Arabia's central bank, a measure of its ability to support its currency, look set to fall sharply this year as oil prices slump and Riyadh expands its sovereign wealth fund to invest abroad, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. They shrank from a record high of $737 billion (578.36 billion pounds) in August 2014 to $529 billion at the end of 2016 as the government liquidated some assets to cover the huge budget deficit caused by the fall in oil prices.

Champions of the rapidly expanding $2 trillion Islamic finance market are probably hoping the Dana Gas situation will go away, and they may yet get their wish, Bloomberg News reported. The Middle Eastern energy explorer sent shockwaves through the Shariah industry this month when, as part of its battle to restructure debt, it declared the bonds it issued were no longer legal under Islamic law.

Nothing in Islamic finance or the United Arab Emirates’ laws regarding Shariah-compliant debt has changed since Dana Gas PJSC restructured its sukuk about four years ago, Bloomberg News reported. "What makes the sukuk illegal now?” asks Rizwan Kanji, a partner at law firm King & Spalding LLP. When the gas producer started negotiations with creditors in 2012, the issue relating to mudarabah structures was “clear and settled,” said the Dubai-based lawyer who specializes in Shariah-compliant deals. Since then, there have been no changes in Islamic finance or related U.A.E.