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.

Saudi contractor Mohammad Al Mojil Group (MMG) said on Monday it had appointed the investment banking arm of Gulf International Bank to advise it on a restructuring of its debts, Reuters reported. No value of the amount of debt being restructured was given in the statement, released to the Saudi stock exchange. MMG Group has been in financial difficulty for some time, with shareholders rejecting a plan to liquidate the company in November after its accumulated losses exceeded 75 percent of its capital at the end of the third quarter.

Corporate collapses and debt restructurings have been common in the Persian Gulf since the financial crisis. But the U.S. bankruptcy filing by the Bahrain-based investment firm Arcapita has presented an unusual sight for the region – a debt-laden company which is planning to sell all its assets to repay creditors and wind up its operations, The Wall Street Journal Middle East Real Time blog reported.

Arcapita Bank BSC, an Islamic-compliant fund manager, won court permission to borrow $350 million from Goldman Sachs International (GS) to finance its exit from bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane in Manhattan approved the financing today after Goldman Sachs and Fortress Credit Corp. revised their loan offers in an auction held in a conference room outside of Lane’s court. Goldman Sachs made the best proposal, Michael Rosenthal, a lawyer for Arcapita, told Lane.

The Israeli government was debating the final points of a two-year austerity budget early Tuesday that would cut spending and raise taxes, outraging many Israelis who voted in a new government this year after promises of economic relief, the International Herald Tribune reported. Even before the new government’s first budget was approved, 12,000 Israelis took to the streets Saturday night in a show of anger reminiscent of the vast social protests that rocked the nation in the summer of 2011.

Dubai Group, an investment company owned by Dubai's ruler, has agreed to a $10 billion debt restructuring with its main bank creditors after three years of talks, potentially lifting a cloud of uncertainty that has engulfed the emirate since the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. If it goes through as expected, the restructuring will be a major step in the broader reorganization of Dubai's government companies in the wake of the financial crisis, analysts say.