Citigroup and International Bank of Qatar are holding up negotiations to restructure $4.5 billion in debt of Abu Dhabi conglomerate Al Jaber Group, further complicating drawn-out talks, sources said, Gulf Daily News reported. Al Jaber is one of the most prominent private sector firms in Abu Dhabi, which has generally suffered fewer corporate problems than neighbouring Dubai since the financial crisis. With operations in construction, aviation and retail, Al Jaber set up a five-bank creditor committee in 2011 to negotiate a restructuring.

Arcapita, a private equity and investment company based in Bahrain, has emerged from bankruptcy protection in the U.S. this week, concluding a reorganization that analysts say may represent the first true post-financial-crisis debt restructuring by an Arab Gulf company, The Wall Street Journal Middle East Real Time blog reported. The bankruptcy plan approved by a U.S. court envisions Arcapita selling down its portfolio of assets over five years to repay creditors, and then effectively going out of business.

Kuwait's Global Investment House said on Wednesday that it had completed a $1.7 billion restructuring plan, the second at the firm since the global financial crisis, Reuters reported. Under the plan, Global separated its core fee business from other parts of the company which were spun off into special purpose vehicles (SPV). Global was one of several Kuwaiti investment firms hit hard by the crisis. It used short-term debt to invest heavily in local real estate and stocks whose values later slumped. Global created two SPVs under the plan.

Banks in the United Arab Emirates are seeking five years to comply with a central bank regulation to limit their exposure to government entities in the second-biggest Arab economy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The banks are also seeking to exclude marketable bonds and sukuks from the proposal, according to the U.A.E. Banks Federation. The central bank said in April 2012 that banks must not lend more than 100 percent of their capital to local governments and the same amount to government-related entities to help reduce risk, and must comply with the new regulations by Sept. 30, 2012.

Indebted Israeli conglomerate IDB Holding will present a new proposal for a debt restructuring to a Tel Aviv court on Sunday after it confirmed that Argentinian businessman Eduardo Elsztain has backed out of a planned investment of $75 million, Reuters reported. Elsztain's investment had been crucial to a previous debt restructuring that IDB, which controls some of Israel's leading companies, had presented to its bondholders. An industry source had told Reuters on Friday that Elsztain had decided not to go ahead with the investment.

Dubai, which teetered on the brink of default in 2009, is accelerating asset sales as more than $30 billion of debt repayments come due next year, Bloomberg reported. Dubai Financial Group yesterday agreed to sell its stake in consumer lender Dubai First to First Gulf Bank PJSC for 601 million dirhams ($163 million). Dubai Holding LLC plans to sell its 35 percent stake in Tunisie Telecom, the country’s ministry for information and communication technologies, said June 21.

A U.S. judge Tuesday approved Arcapita Bank B.S.C.'s plan to gradually liquidate itself in a process that conforms with Islamic Shariah law, which generally prohibits borrowing money with interest, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Bahrain investment firm entered bankruptcy protection last year with a goal of restructuring itself but ended up with a plan to orderly liquidate its private-equity investments.

A Tel Aviv court set a late August deadline on Sunday for indebted Israeli conglomerate IDB Holding to sell its stake in an insurance firm, giving its chairman some breathing space in a bitter ownership battle, Reuters reported. Many of the companies IDB owns have been hit by slowing economic growth and increased competition. IDB Holding owes bondholders 2 billion shekels ($550 million) and its unit IDB Development owes a further 5.8 billion shekels. Both sets of bondholders - mainly institutional investors led by U.S.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which is already providing Arcapita Bank $350 million in bankruptcy exit financing, is now seeking to give the Bahrain investment firm a $175 million bankruptcy loan that would pay off existing lender Fortress Investment Group LLC, Nasdaq.com reported on a Dow Jones Business News story. In a Monday filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, Arcapita said the Goldman loan would pay off the $105 million still owed to Fortress and later convert into the $350 million exit loan that Goldman is already providing.

Renault SA, France’s second-biggest carmaker, is ending a five-year partnership with Better Place LLC after the operator of electric-vehicle charging stations announced plans to shut down, Bloomberg reported. Better Place filed a motion for liquidation with an Israeli court yesterday after failing to attract new investments, according to a company statement. Renault and Better Place began working together in 2008 and said a year later that they aimed to sell 100,000 of the Fluence ZE, the French carmaker’s first electric vehicle, in Israel and Denmark by 2016.