United Arab Emirates

A property boom in Dubai that pushed the number of residential transactions to a record high last year has continued into 2023, with sales surpassing those levels in the first 10 months of this year, Bloomberg News reported. The Middle East’s tourism and financial hub recorded 93,590 transactions through to the end of October, surpassing 92,178 in all of 2022, according to CBRE Group Inc. Still, the number of sales slowed in October, falling 23.6% from a year earlier as developers offered fewer new off-plan projects.

KBBO Group and its hospitals unit have received creditor approval for a debt restructuring plan, two years after the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm’s founder filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Creditors approved Emirates Hospitals Group’s plan earlier this week, according to people familiar with the matter and a presentation seen by Bloomberg News. The deal allows Emirates Hospitals to stave off liquidation and paves the way for a sale of the company by 2025. KBBO also received the go-ahead this month, the people said, asking not to be named because the information isn’t public.

FTX Dubai, which was created just months before the global crypto exchange collapsed last November, is asking to be exempt from U.S. bankruptcy proceedings, TheStreet.com reported. “FTX Dubai is balance-sheet solvent. Therefore, the debtors believe that a solvent voluntary liquidation procedure in accordance with the laws of the United Arab Emirates would allow a timely distribution of the positive cash balance after payment of all outstanding liabilities and liquidation of all assets," court documents said.

Dubai is reprimanding BitOasis, one of the largest crypto platforms focused on customers in the Middle East, for failing to meet mandated conditions set forth by the local regulator, Bloomberg News reported. The emirate, which pitches itself as a global crypto hub, has been tightening scrutiny of license seekers since last year’s bankruptcy of FTX. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority issued an alert on Monday, saying it initiated an enforcement action against BitOasis.

The United Arab Emirates' highest court Tuesday ordered a British hedge fund trader convicted of orchestrating a $1.7 billion tax fraud to pay that amount to Denmark's tax authority, the Associated Press reported. Financier Sanjay Shah was convicted in a lower court of masterminding a scheme that ran from 2012 to 2015. Under it, foreign businesses pretended to own shares in Danish companies and claimed tax refunds for which they were not eligible. He was arrested in Dubai last year.

The Abu Dhabi Global Market's (ADGM) Registration Authority is seeking feedback on its proposed legislative framework for distributed ledger technology (DLT), targeting disclosures, liquidation and governance structures, CoinDesk.com reported. The ADGM is an international finance center within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has a bespoke licensing regime for virtual asset service providers supervised by its financial regulator. The authority is not the ADGM’s financial watchdog, so the proposal is limited to tackling matters of service type and governance.

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank PJSC is said to be in talks with funds to sell 13.5 billion dirhams ($3.7 billion) worth of soured loans, as the emirate’s second-largest lender steps up efforts to clean up its books, Bloomberg News reported. The bank is exploring the sale of a retail portfolio that includes car loans, private and credit-card debt, most of which are held by expatriate workers, people familiar with the matter said. Emirati nationals still owe ADCB — as the bank is known — far more money on average, they added, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

Liquidators for defunct crypto exchange FTX asked a judge to approve the sale of its interest in a fund of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital to an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm, in a deal valued at $45 million, Bloomberg News reported. FTX agreed to sell the interest in the Sequoia Capital Fund, which previously belonged to its sister trading outfit Alameda Research’s venture arm, to Al Nawwar Investments RSC Limited on Wednesday, its estate said in a filing to Delaware’s bankruptcy court late that same day.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has shut its Abu Dhabi office less than a year after securing a license in the region, a spokesperson said on Thursday, as the company seeks to sharpen its focus after FTX's bankruptcy shook the digital assets sector, Reuters reported. The U.S.-based company had said last year it would reduce its workforce by 30%, or about 1,100 employees, as rising rates and worries of an economic downturn soured the sentiment on crypto.