United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi-based conglomerate Al Jaber Group has signed a debt restructuring deal with its bank creditors, the conglomerate said on Monday, addressing one of the United Arab Emirates' last big debt hangovers from the global financial crisis, Reuters reported. Al Jaber, a family-owned group with operations in aviation, construction and retailing, had been in talks with bank creditors to renegotiate its obligations since 2011. Like many family-owned groups in the Gulf, Al Jaber looked to expand beyond its core business - in Al Jaber's case, construction - during the boom years of the mid-2000s.

Italian carrier Alitalia is in for some "painful and arduous" restructuring but should see a deal with Etihad Airways in a matter of weeks, the airline's chief executive officer said Monday, Gazzetta del Sud reported. Gabriele Del Torchio said that changes were necessary to attract essential investment from Abu Dhabi-based Etihad, which he said is prepared to invest 560 million euros in the cash-strapped Alitalia.

The UAE-based Etihad Airways has said that it is pressing ahead with a plan for an equity investment in the struggling Italian carrier Alitalia, The Economic Times reported. Etihad Airways, which has been in negotiations for almost a year, said it will forward a letter detailing the conditions precedent and the criteria for a proposed equity investment in the Italian airline which had to turn to shareholders for a 250 million pound cash injection for its bail-out in January.

Dubai has received a financial boost thanks to an agreement to refinance at preferential rates $20bn of bonds and loans owed to the central bank of the United Arab Emirates and its capital, Abu Dhabi, the Financial Times reported. The Gulf’s commercial hub, which has an overall debt load of about $130bn, said it extended the maturities for five years at interest rates of one per cent, below the four per cent agreed in 2009 when the UAE came to Dubai’s rescue.

Dubai’s global financial crisis-induced slump, followed by a less dramatic, but equally sharp, recovery make for a compelling story. The endless flow of positive news in the desert emirate culminated late last year in Dubai winning the hosting rights for World Expo 2020, The Wall Street Journal Middle East Real Time blog reported. But the smart people at Bank of America Merrill Lynch are a little more sober in their analysis of Dubai’s rebound. Afterall, there’s still some pretty significant financial hurdles for the city’s government-related entities to clear.

State-owned investment firm Dubai Group announced its long-awaited $10 billion debt restructuring deal with creditors late on Thursday. While all bankers and advisors who took part in the often acrimonious negotiations breathed a sigh of relief, most of them are also aware that Dubai’s debt problems aren’t quite a thing of the past yet, The Wall Street Journal Middle East Real Time blog reported.

Dubai Group LLC, an investment company owned by the emirate’s ruler, said it reached a final agreement with lenders on $6 billion in debt restructuring after three years of talks, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders agreed to extend the maturity for secured debt to December 2016, and for partially secured and unsecured loans to December 2024, Dubai Group said in an e-mailed statement today. A further $4 billion of “related party debt has been subordinated to the claims of the bank creditors,” it said.

Dubai Group has signed a $10 billion debt restructuring deal, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, marking the end of a perilous period which saw the emirate risk collapse under a mountain of debt obligations, Reuters reported. The unit of Dubai Holding, the investment vehicle of Dubai's ruler, was one of a number of state-linked entities which borrowed heavily from banks to fund an acquisitions spree during the boom years of 2006-08.

Nakheel, the Dubai government-owned developer that restructured $16 billion of debt three years ago after being hit by a sharp drop in local real estate prices, is now aiming to pay back much of those borrowings early and eventually become debt-free as property prices climb again, The Wall Street Journal Middle East Real Time blog reported. The company will pre-pay 4 billion U.A.E. dirhams ($1.09 billion) of bank loans originally set to mature next September, chairman Ali Rashid Lootah said on Saturday.

The Index tower on Dubai’s answer to Wall Street has 23 floors of empty offices out of the 25 it opened in 2011, Bloomberg News reported today. The office space in the Index on Sheikh Zayed Road was sold in pieces to nine different investors under a system known as strata title, according to developer Union Properties PJSC, meaning potential tenants face the prospect of having multiple landlords.