Posted on 10/21/2008 8:23:59 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
How Wall Street's Bust Threatens Dubai's Boom
By Scott MacLeod / Cairo
Saif Ahmed began living the Dubai dream five years ago. The University of Toronto business school grad moved to the Gulf city-state and quickly co-founded property developer Universal Canlink Inc. By 2006, the firm was turning over $15 million a year as its brochures lured foreign investors with tales of "meteoric" growth in the Dubai real estate market. Now, as the global credit crisis spirals from Wall Street to the Middle East, Ahmed is coming back down to earth. There's still interest, he explains, but the buying frenzy in Dubai is gone. "Before, people were buying blindly without asking much about the details," says Ahmed, a Canadian. "Now such risk takers have disappeared from the market."
Among the harbingers of the changing mood: Nakheel, the developer of Dubai's proposed kilometer-high skyscraper near Jebel Ali airport, recently announced that it is reassessing its overall staffing needs in line with "predictions of a downturn in the global economy." Boardrooms and coffee shops alike are buzzing with talk about the coming fall. The Cairo-based investment bank EFG-Hermes recently predicted that Dubai property values could tumble as much as 20% in the next three years. Share prices of Emaar, a public Dubai company that has become one of the biggest real estate developers in the world, have fallen by two-thirds since January.
To be sure, nobody's calling it a bust — not yet anyway. Midsized builders like Ahmed are still open for business. And a record 70,000 visitors attended Dubai's annual Cityscape property show this month, where mega-projects worth a total of some $180 billion were unveiled.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
When your business is hyped into stratosphere by global business media, you should know that your days are numbered after you had your 15 minutes of fame. That is the moral of the story. :-)
Ping!
Hopefully when Sarah is VP and we develop our FOUR times the Saudis oil reserves in shale oil, coal diesel and ND oil.
Obama is getting his $$$$ from the ME. We need to stop sending $750 B to the ME for oil. We have it at home.
WOW this doesn’t surprise me ,I spent some time online researching this monstrosity,sooner it rots back into the desert the better
Business and money always look for a safe-haven.
Dubai will prosper as long as a couple of factors remain true. It must be physically safe, which depends on the US Navy. And it must be relatively liberal compared to the rest of the Middle East. And it must be a relatively regulation-free business climate.
If those things remain true, Dubai will be the place to go. The more predatory governments around the world become toward businesses, the more they will look for places to go where they will be able to operate unmolested.
An Obama administration might be good for Dubai, as he ramps up government control of companies in the US. Or bad, if he withdraws military protection and it faces Iranian intimidation.
Castles in the sand or sandcastles? Time will tell.
I’ve always said, in 20-30 years, Dubai will be the most glittering ghost town the world has ever seen. Hey maybe they could go into solar power...whoops, we have enough deserts here for that.
Poor Brad and Angelina, alone on their man made island in the Dubai waterfront. Not a soul to be found.
I have had that same feeling, their use of slave labor,
It is a nasty place.
Poor Brad and Angelina, alone on their man made island in the Dubai waterfront. Not a soul to be found.
LOL
so sorry!
/s
Oh come on, there is infinite demand for million dollar condos in a country with 110* temps and 96% humidity!
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