United Arab Emirates

Arif Naqvi, the founder of embattled Dubai-based private-equity firm Abraaj Group, and Crescent Group’s Hamid Jafar reached a settlement in a $217 million bounced-check case, Naqvi’s lawyer said two days after a court sentenced him to prison, Bloomberg News reported. The announcement comes after a court in the United Arab Emirates sentenced Naqvi -- who is outside the country -- and another executive, Rafique Lakhani, to three years in jail and ordered them to pay court expenses, according to court documents seen by Bloomberg. The verdict was issued on Aug. 26, the documents show.

Investors in a $1.6 billion-Abraaj Group fund said they are owed at least $300 million by the floundering Middle Eastern private equity firm, according to a letter seen by Bloomberg News. They also ask to remove the company as manager. The estimate of what is owed to Private Equity Fund IV by Abraaj is nearly triple the $94.6 million found after a review by Abraaj’s accounting firm Deloitte LLP in June, Bloomberg News reported. The investors are also seeking to stop paying management fees to Abraaj, citing breach of duties to the fund, according to the letter dated Aug.13.

Dubai’s financial services regulator has stopped Abraaj Capital from taking on new business or moving money to Abraaj Investment Management (AIML), its related entity, as part of an investigation into the group, Reuters reported. “Given the onset of financial difficulties of the wider Abraaj Group, the DFSA has been closely monitoring the activities of its regulated entity ACL,” Dubai Financial Services Authority said in a statement on Thursday.

United Arab Emirates-based energy company Dana Gas reported a 14 percent decrease in second quarter net profit on Tuesday, citing one-off sukuk restructuring costs, Reuters reported. Dana Gas has been at the centre of a long and complex legal dispute with its creditors when last year it halted payments on $700 million in sukuk, or Islamic bonds, saying the instruments had become unlawful in the UAE.

Creditors of Stanford Marine Group (SMG), which has links to troubled private equity firm Abraaj, are in talks with three potential buyers, sources familiar with the matter say, Reuters reported. Banks are overseeing control of Dubai-based SMG after it failed to meet the terms of its debt obligations due to financial stress linked to a steep fall in chartering rates, the sources said. SMG, which operates offshore supply vessels that service the oil and gas industry, is 51 percent owned by a fund managed by Abraaj.

Investors in a $1.6 billion-Abraaj Group fund have hired advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal Holdings LLC to help recover money owed by the floundering Middle Eastern private equity firm, people with knowledge of the matter said. The New York-based company will represent Abraaj Private Equity Fund IV’s backers in talks with liquidators as they seek to recover more than $99 million owed by the Dubai-based buyout firm, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential, Bloomberg News reported.

Buyout firms TPG and KKR & Co have emerged as leading contenders to run Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj’s troubled $1 billion healthcare fund, three sources familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported. The two firms have access to the healthcare fund’s virtual data room and are about to start due diligence, with offers expected in the next few weeks, two of the three sources said.

In a related story, Bloomberg News reported that investors in a $1.6 billion-Abraaj Group fund have hired advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal Holdings LLC to help recover money owed by the floundering Middle Eastern private equity firm, people with knowledge of the matter said. The New York-based company will represent Abraaj Private Equity Fund IV’s backers in talks with liquidators as they seek to recover more than $99 million owed by the Dubai-based buyout firm, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.

When the pressure intensified on Abraaj over allegations that it had mishandled investors’ funds, Arif Naqvi, the private equity group’s founder, handed over the reins of the company’s fund business to “drive the necessary operational and governance changes,” the Financial Times reported. The Dubai-based buyout house said the move would “ensure that the firm continues to perform at the highest levels”.

Holders of $500m defaulted Etihad-linked bonds learnt on a restructuring call on Tuesday that an auction aimed at saving the structured debt yielded a bid of just a fraction of their assets’ value, the Financial Times reported. The fate of $1.2bn bonds at the two special-purpose vehicles tied to Etihad has been in the balance since last summer, after the collapse of Italian airline Alitalia and Germany’s Air Berlin.