A handout illustration of the Fujairah Business Park released to the media yesterday. The park will include a 220-room hotel, 200,000 square feet of offices, 150,000 square feet of retail space and some apartments. It’s set for completion within two and half years.
Bloomberg
Dubai Investments plans 10bn dirhams ($2.7bn) of real-estate projects in the next five years as it seeks to benefit from resurgent property demand.
Developments include Mirdiff Hills, a 2.5bn dirham project in Dubai that will include 1,500 homes, a 230-room hotel, shops and 200,000 square-feet of office space, chief executive officer Khalid bin Kalban said in an interview. The company’s Dubai Investment Real Estate Co unit will start tendering for the development in the next two months, he said.
Dubai Investments, whose largest shareholder is state-owned Investment Corp of Dubai (ICD), is seeking to profit from a market recovery in the emirate after one of the world’s worst property crashes during the financial crisis in 2008. Local developers are reviving projects amid a surge in prices and new measures such as limiting mortgages and a doubling of transaction fees which have helped stabilise the market.
“We don’t think there will be need to borrow” for Mirdiff Hills, bin Kalban said. “We’ll be able to sell the project easily because of its size, location and components.” Still, the company may need bank or debt-market funding for a 7bn-dirham project planned in Dubai Investment Park.
The 13mn square-feet village with homes, shops, offices and hotels, may require the company to raise cash either through loans, Islamic bonds or by seeking investors to take a stake in the project, according to bin Kalban.
“We are talking to a major investor to come on board and help,” he said. “They will either pay us rental or take over the project within a certain number of years. ‘‘We are discussing seriously the option of rent to own with them.’’
Work started two weeks ago on an 800mn-dirham business park in Fujairah, bin Kalban said. The park will include a 220-room hotel, 200,000 square feet of offices, 150,000 square feet of retail space and some apartments. It’s set for completion within two and half years, he said.
Al Taif Investment, a 60%-owned unit of Dubai Investments and developer of the business park, secured a 300mn dirham loan from Al-Hilal Bank for the project.
Dubai Investments is also in talks with owners of several unfinished buildings within Dubai Investment Park to take over and complete the stalled construction, he said, without naming them.
UAE’s Marka to buy retail outfit from Dubai World for $60mn
Marka, a retailing and restaurants start-up, has agreed to buy a sporting goods retail firm from state-owned conglomerate Dubai World for 220mn dirhams ($60mn), in a move that will make Marka operationally profitable in 2015, it said yesterday.
The acquisition of Retailcorp, a subsidiary of Dubai World’s investment unit Istithmar World, will be funded by the Marka’s own funds and bank facilities, said the UAE-based company, which listed in Dubai earlier this year.
The deal will give Marka a network of 15 sporting goods outlets across the UAE, and Marka aims to expand the chain across the country and the region, it added.
Dubai World, which signed a $25bn debt restructuring agreement in 2011 after it was hit hard by the global financial crisis, has gradually been selling off assets to help it meet the terms of the restructuring.