United Arab Emirates

Dana Gas, the Abu Dhabi-listed energy firm, postponed the shareholder vote for restructuring of the $920 million sukuk to April 23 after a meeting on Sunday failed to meet the required quorum, Gulf News reported on a Reuters story. This is the second time the meeting has been rescheduled after a majority was not reached at a shareholder meet on March 21. Dana announced the new date in a filing on the Abu Dhabi bourse.

Dana Gas, the Abu Dhabi-listed energy firm, said a shareholder meeting to vote on the restructuring of the $920 million sukuk did not met the required quorum, Reuters reported. A new meeting has been scheduled for March 21, the company said in a filing to the Abu Dhabi stock exchange on Thursday. Dana became the first company in UAE to miss repayment of a maturing bond on October 31 but agreed new terms with a creditor committee representing bondholders, which included investment firms Ashmore Group and BlackRock, a week later.

Cash is king in the Persian Gulf emirate’s rebounding property market, limiting the power of regulators to control rising prices that fueled the last property bubble by imposing restrictions on mortgage loans to foreigners. Buyers from Iran to Russia to Greece are paying cash in as many as 70 percent of Dubai home purchases, up from 49 percent in 2007, according to researcher Reidin.com, Bloomberg reported.

Dubai-based property lender Amlak Finance is in talks with creditors to restructure debts of around AED7bn (US$1.9bn), in the latest attempt to resurrect a victim of Dubai's property crash, ArabianBusiness.com reported. The sharia-compliant mortgage lender is negotiating with a creditor committee of six members, which includes two government-owned funds as well as Dubai's largest lender and its biggest Islamic bank, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not public.

Property buyers using mortgages will have to stump up more than twice as much out of their own pocket to make a down payment as a result of the Central Bank’s new mortgage rules, new research found yesterday, The National reported. Buyers’ self-funding requirements will rise by 100 per cent for nationals and 150 per cent for expatriates, said Chiradeep Ghosh, an analyst at Securities and Investment Company (Sico), a Bahrain-based investment bank. Bankers are to meet tomorrow to formulate a response to the government circular.

The United Arab Emirates plans to restrict mortgages for foreigners to 50 percent of the property’s value, threatening to derail a nascent recovery in Dubai home prices after more than three years of declines, Bloomberg News reported today. U.A.E. citizens can get as much 70 percent of the value of a first house and 60 percent for a second, according to guidelines issued by the central bank and obtained by Bloomberg News. Foreigners can get mortgages of as much as 40 percent of the value of a second property, according to the document.

Dana Gas PJSC, whose bondholders include BlackRock Inc and Ashmore Group Plc, completed the restructuring of $920 million of Islamic bonds after agreeing to pay twice the average yield on emerging markets corporate sukuk, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Dana Gas, which missed sukuk payments in October, will pay bondholders $70 million in cash and split the remaining Shariah- compliant debt into $425 million of convertible bonds and an ordinary sukuk of equal value, the United Arab Emirates fuel producer said in a statement.

Netoil Inc., a Dubai-based company, has submitted a revised offer for insolvent Petroplus Holdings AG’s Petit-Couronne refinery in Normandy, France, teaming up with BP Plc., Bloomberg Businessweek reported. “We didn’t have a supplier before, now, we have a letter of intent from BP to supply 120,000 barrels of crude a day to the refinery for a three-year period,” Roger Tamraz, Netoil’s chairman, said today in a telephone interview from Paris.

Dana Gas, a Sharjah-based energy company with operations in the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Egypt, said Thursday it failed to pay back a $920 million Islamic bond, or sukuk, that came due on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company is in discussions with holders of the debt to amend the terms of the sukuk and extend its maturity, according to a statement posted on the Abu Dhabi bourse website. Dana has a three-day grace period before it can officially be declared in default, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Limitless, a Dubai-based property developer, has received full agreement from its bank lenders to restructure a $1.2 billion Islamic loan, the company said on Thursday. The company has made all profit payments on the loan since signing it in 2008, Limitless said in an emailed statement, and would continue to do so under the new agreement. Limitless, which had received several maturity extensions from banks as the restructuring talks continued, didn’t say how long it was given to pay back the loan under the deal or what rates it would pay.