United Arab Emirates

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.

Veteran fixed-income investor Abdul Kadir Hussain sees unsettling similarities between the 1997 Asian crisis and the present that spell trouble for emerging markets, Bloomberg News reported. Default rates on emerging-market debt will climb next year as the ending of a decade of easy money by central banks hits weaker companies the most, said Hussain, the head of fixed income at Arqaam Capital, a Dubai-based investment bank.

Two United Arab Emirates airlines have held talks with South African Airways about a partnership that it says is needed to revive its business, City Press reported, citing the U.A.E. ambassador to South Africa. Talks between Emirates Airline and SAA, which have been going on for some months, are being facilitated by the U.A.E.’s embassy in Pretoria, the Johannesburg-based newspaper cited Mahash Alhameli as saying, Bloomberg News reported. Etihad Airways has also been holding separate negotiations with SAA, he said.