Saudi-owned MBI International will sign an agreement to buy 12 hotels in France from Starwood Capital in deal that could be worth $2 billion, a Saudi newspaper reported on Sunday. The deal will include Le Crillon Hotel in Paris and 11 other establishments, Asharq Al Awsat reported, quoting unidentified sources close to the Saudi group. London-based MBI International, which is owned by Saudi billionaire Mohamed bin Issal Al Jaber, could not be immediately reached for comment. A deal will be unveiled « within the next few days » and the US firm is in the process of informing staff of the hotels involved in the deal, it said. Other hotels in the deal include Concorde Lafayette and Concorde Montparnasse. Jaber has said that his group is focusing its expansion at the luxury end of the real estate business. If completed, the transaction with Starwood will be MBI International’s second luxury property investment in France since June this year. It announced in July plans to spend 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to build two luxury towers in Paris. Reuters
Residents of Dubai Pearl will now be a boat trip away from their own private beach after the developer, Pearl Dubai, bought an island at Nakheel’s The World development. The company paid US$27.2 million (Dh100m) for Archangel, a 1.6 million square foot island close to Siberia and is located in the north of the 300-island development. Pearl Dubai will spend another Dh800m building on it. A significant part of the island will be for the exclusive use of residents at Dubai Pearl, the company’s Dh15 billion project under construction opposite Palm Jumeirah. While Dubai Pearl will include a mix of hotels and apartment buildings, the one thing it lacks is a beach. “Pearl Dubai is supporting its clients with a beach at The World,” said Abdul Majeed al Fahim, the chairman of Pearl Dubai, which is a consortium of investors led by Al Fahim Group. “We will keep one section of the island for private development, while the other four will be for the residents. It will be like an exclusive beach, so people can feel the freedom of being there without any harassment.” With a Dh1bn partnership deal already in place with the French crystal company Baccarat for the Baccarat Hotel and Residences at Dubai Pearl, the developer is continuing to pursue investors in the luxury end of the market, despite some local firms moving their offerings downmarket because of changing conditions. An apartment at Baccarat Residences is being sold for about Dh6,000 per sq ft. “It’s not just about saying your building is ‘luxury’, it’s about what you provide. We’re very selective,” Mr Fahim said. Earlier this month, DIFC Investments, the investment arm of the Dubai International Financial Centre, put more than Dh3bn into the Dubai Pearl project. The company will develop office and residential buildings. More outside investors are expected to follow. Angela Giuffrida thenational.ae
A crucial decision on the future of the internet will be made at a meeting of industry professionals in Dubai this week. A body that oversees the regional distribution of internet protocol (IP) addresses – the unique numbers that identify every device connected to the internet – will make a decision on migrating to a new addressing system that can cope with the explosive growth of the global network. The current IP address format means that only 4.3 billion unique addresses can be generated, a supply widely predicted to be exhausted by late 2010. The new format, known as IP Version 6 (IPv6), allows for considerably more: 79 billion billion billion times as many as the current system. But migrating to this system requires a co-ordinated effort by internet providers, one that the organisers of this week’s meeting hope to reach consensus on. “We knew for more than 10 years that we would run out of addresses,” said Axel Pawlik, the managing director of the RIPE Network Coordination Centre (NCC). “But the reach of the internet has grown much faster than a lot of people expected, so now it is more important to find solutions.” The meeting comes at a time when engaging the internet community in the Middle East – where internet use is growing faster than anywhere else – is of increasing importance to the organisations that govern the internet. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the allocation of website domain names, will meet next month in Cairo. Earlier this year it committed to a series of reforms, including allowing website addresses to be written in Arabic script. RIPE, an independent non-profit organisation based in Amsterdam, manages the allocation of IP addresses in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. The transition to the new addressing standard will take many years, involving billions of dollars of hardware and software upgrades by internet providers around the world. In the meantime, said Mr Pawlik, the internet community will need to develop a system to manage the distribution of an increasingly scarce number of addresses. “We foresee that there may be something like a market developing,” he said. “A system to manage the transfer of IP addresses will be important.” While a market for addresses would make sense once they became a scarce resource, there will be a number of legal and technical hurdles to such a trade. Creating a framework for the transfer of IP addresses between different parties will be a key topic of -discussion at this week’s meeting. In an ideal world, Mr Pawlik said, internet providers would agree to migrate en masse to the new IPv6 system. But in practice, the process will be a complicated and messy mixture of technical and political bargaining and compromise. “If everybody suddenly agrees to pack up and move over to the new system, that would be the best outcome,” he said. “It is also the most unlikely.” Tom Gara thenational.ae
MANAMA — The drop in oil prices will affect the growth rate in Bahrain but would not bring it to standstill, therefore turning the government’s focus on important infrastructure and housing projects, a senior government official has said. The Minister of the Premier’s Court Shaikh Khalid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa told the press in the three-day Bahrain International Property Exhibition 2008 (BIPEX) that concluded on Saturday that the government had been launching many initiatives to diverse its financial resources and becoming less dependent on oil revenues. He said that BIPEX was one of many initiatives to enhance property sector and attract foreign investments. “Bahrain urban development, paralleled with an economic boom, has achieved its set up goals through the implementation of various plans,” he said. The event was the fifth real estate and property exhibition and a continuation of previous ones. Shaikh Khalid pointed out that such quality exhibitions are a genuine expression of distinctive thought blending science with work. New housing projects are mushrooming all over the country from which thousands of Bahraini families have benefited Shaikh Khalid said, pointing out to the speech of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa before the national assembly in which he pledged every support to such projects. One of the main objectives of BIPEX was to provide the opportunity for developers and real estate agencies to measure the volume of demand and cater to buyers needs through provision of information about key issues such as funding, legal rules, tax systems, investment revenues, re-selling conditions and tax transfer on inherited real estate properties. During the last day of BIPEX, seminars on properties were held that tackled the shortage and high prices of building materials and how it affected the progress of some properties projects in Bahrain. Richard Browning, Chief Executive Officer of Riffa Views, confirmed to the Khaleej Times that the building materials problems had their effects on Riffa Views by delaying the handing over of properties to their owners by six months. He said that such a shortcoming was not a major problem and would not affect the trustworthy position and revenues of the company as buyers would be amused of the new to them concept of greenery surrounding in the heart of the desert. “We were keen to submit the houses all together to protect the main theme of Riffa View as a green heaven in the heart of the desert, while if we hand over completed homes then they new owners have to live through the inconvenient of being around construction operations,” he said. One of the seminars highlighted that the building materials problems have been eliminated through steps taken last summer by the government, including the cabinet decision to instruct government organisations to import their need of materials from aboard and allocate the existence supply to companies. In mid-October, the Minister of Industry and Commerce Dr Hassan Fakhro received traders of building materials to discuss the issue. Dr Fakhro stressed government’s keenness to ensure that adequate quantities of building materials are reaching the market from various sources in addition to its efforts to facilitate the distribution of the materials to companies operating in the construction sector. In this regard, he pointed out the importance of cooperation with the government. Dr Fakhro stressed the importance of holding such meetings to discuss the latest developments in the sector and to ensure the availability of cement and steel that are high in demand now. He added that it is important to make all efforts to provide basic materials to meet market needs and to avoid any scarcity that might happen especially as the Kingdom is witnessing urban real estate development. Building materials’ traders praised the minister and the ministry for their efforts in resolving various obstacles that the sector is facing. Suad Hamada khaleejtimes.com
Finance and economy ministers and central bankers from the Arab states in the Gulf met for emergency talks on Saturday to forge a common front to battle the global economic crisis. The policymakers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met behind closed doors in Saudi Arabia to examine the impact of the crisis on their economies, Qatari Finance Minister Yussef Hussein Kamal said. They will discuss « mechanisms of coordination and cooperation between GCC countries aimed at protecting their economies from the fallout of the world financial crisis, » GCC Secretary General Abdulrahman al-Attiyah said. Stock markets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken a severe battering this month, losing some 200 billion dollars. Fears of a liquidity shortfall have also loomed over Gulf banks because of the global credit crunch, with the banks having limited ability to borrow on the international debt market. Saturday’s gathering in Riyadh came as the Saudi stock market, the largest in the Arab world, opened trading with a sharp drop of more than nine percent to its lowest point in four years. It also comes after OPEC, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, announced on Friday that it will slash oil output by 1.5 million barrels a day from November 1. The talks are also taking place three weeks before the United States hosts an unprecedented summit of the world’s richest nations and emerging economies to discuss the global financial crisis. Saudi King Abdullah will be the only Arab leader to attend the November 15 summit in Washington. khaleejtimes.com
UAE Economy Minister Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri said the UAE has one of the regions’ most competitive economies in terms of attracting foreign investments. The UAE ranks 31st globally in Davos Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) for 2008-2009, issued by Davos World Economic Forum and first in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region. He added that the country ranks first on the Arab World Competitiveness Index as well as 23rd globally on the Davos Business Competitiveness Index (BCI) for 2008. Al Mansouri made his remarks at the 24th meeting of the OIC Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Co-operation. He led the UAE delegation to the meeting, which was concluded in Istanbul yesterday. « The UAE also ranked 3rd on AT Kearney FDI Confidence Index for 2007 », he remarked. All these ranks, added Al Mansouri, are true demonstration of the robust current and future FDI flow into the UAE, adding that the country’s GDP rose to $198 billion (Dh727bn) in 2007 posting growth rate of 16.7 per cent where the share of non-oil sectors reached 16.5 per cent ($122 billion) in 2007. The surplus reached $48 billion. The UAE’s total exports reached $180bn in 2007 where crude oil exports accounted for only 39.4 per cent. He further added that FDI in the UAE economy grew by 11 per cent in 2006 to reach $18.7bn compared with $16.6bn in 2005, according to Ministry’s figures, thanks to the country’s investment and economic open and attractive policies and the geographical and strategic location. Al Mansouri stressed the need for promoting stronger economic partnerships among OIC’s member countries to further increase trade and combat poverty and disease as well as to strengthen the economic development in the less developed countries, in Africa in particualr. He also stressed the need for making joint Islamic projects as a strategic goal and an effective step towards economic integration among OIC member countries. He called all investors to tap opportunities in all the OIC member countries to « provide a social and political safety valve for OIC countries and the whole Islamic World ». He further called for a clear realistic and strategic vision for Islamic cooperation and foreign investments. By WAM
Emirates airline will become the first carrier to link the Middle East and the US West Coast when it launches a non-stop service tomorrow to Los Angeles, the second-largest US city. The journey from Dubai to “Tinseltown”, some 13,420km, will take 16 hours and 35 minutes on a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft. Emirates is offering 266 seats in a three-class configuration, with 10 tonnes of freight capacity. Emirates’s fourth US destination, to San Francisco, will launch on Dec 15. In the process, Emirates’s new routes to California may help to reshape the global airline connectivity map, in which travel between the US and West Asia has until now been heavily dependent on transiting through Europe. “This new route is a very important growth market for Emirates,” said Richard Aboulafia, an airline analyst with the Teal Group, based in the US. “LA is one of the top global business, travel and demographic hubs, and Emirates is particularly good at attracting premium traffic, the most profitable market.” Emirates’s LA flight will be its third into the US, following New York and Houston, and its first to the populous and prosperous US West Coast. Major incentives for linking the two cities are the large communities of Iranian-Americans and Indian-Americans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, two affluent groups that travel often to the Middle East and South Asia to visit friends and relatives. “There is a massive local community of west Asian and Middle Eastern-origin residents on the West Coast, many of them very well educated and affluent,” said Peter Harbison, the managing director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, a consulting firm and think tank based in Sydney. Mr Harbison said Emirates stood to score points with these travellers because of the greater accessibility and a more user-friendly service Emirates offered via its new Terminal Three facilities at Dubai International Airport. The LA service is a coup for Emirates, which beat its rival Qatar Airways, another fast-expanding Gulf airline that is trying to become a major long-haul carrier for East-West traffic. Last year, Akbar al Baker, the chief executive of Qatar Airways, said opening a route to Los Angeles was a top priority because of the 500,000 Iranian-Americans who would now be able to travel back to Iran via the Gulf. The new service may also worry British Airways, which boasts some of the most extensive connections to the US of any foreign carrier. “Dubai’s plan is to become the hub that links the world’s biggest aviation market, North America, with its fastest-growing, Asia. And this link would bypass Europe altogether,” Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways (BA), warned in a recent letter to the editor of a British newspaper. As he lobbied for expanding Heathrow airport, Mr Walsh said BA was directly threatened by Emirates’s growth. “The hugely expanded Emirates will be scooping up Heathrow’s and the UK’s business. With shrivelling connectivity, London’s position as a global business capital will slump at the same rate,” he said. At the same time, US carriers have also been eager to bypass Europe and connect the US with the fast-growing Gulf region. As Emirates’s inaugural flight to LA flies over the Atlantic, United Airlines will be launching its inaugural flight to Dubai from its hub in Washington DC. The new route follows Delta Air Lines’s service to Dubai from its base in Atlanta, which began last year. Mr Harbison said opening new markets could often create transformative and profound changes to the air travel industry. “As we have seen over and over again, when new aerial highways are created, whole new markets open up – either because of lower prices or because of the greater convenience,” he said. If so, the stimulus will help to buoy flagging Middle East air traffic figures, which fell 2.8 per cent last month, the first monthly decline in four years, according to the International Air Transport Association. The new route comes amid ongoing aircraft availability concerns for Emirates and other Gulf airlines, which have some of the world’s largest order books for new wide-bodied aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. Due to the two-month-long labour strike at Boeing, as well as problems with one of Boeing’s key galley suppliers, Emirates was forced to delay the Los Angeles launch from September until tomorrow. It also scaled back plans to fly to Los Angeles to only three flights per week, from seven days a week, because of a shortage of aircraft due to the strike. thenational.ae
Dubai: Saudi Arabian stocks fell sharply on Saturday, tracking a slump in world markets, as investors worried that an oil price plunge and possible global recession would hit the growth of firms in the world’s top oil exporter. The benchmark of the largest Arab bourse closed 8.7 per cent lower at 5,624 points, a day after bourses around the world plummeted as investors, fearing a long and deep worldwide recession, dumped risky assets. The index has fallen more than 44 per cent so far this year and is the worst-performing measure in the region after Dubai. « The Saudi market is positively correlated with the global markets, especially the big ones, » said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB bank, HSBC’s Saudi affiliate. « As we’ve seen these markets tumble, the Saudi market has tumbled by a higher degree. There is negative sentiment. » Saudi investors were also reacting to the near $4 drop in oil prices on Friday. Six other stock markets in the oil-exporting region were closed on Saturday. Reuters
The sixth Gulf summit for leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states will be held in Jeddah next Sunday, and will be chaired by Kuwait as chairman of the current session of the GCC. Holding the midyear unofficial GCC summit aims to exchange viewpoints and explore latest regional and international developments, to boost coordination and consultation, as well as to unite stands. The summit will be preceded by a meeting of the GCC Ministerial Council, which will include foreign ministers of GCC states, to prepare the agenda to be discussed during the one-day summit. Gulf diplomatic sources told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) in Riyadh, Tuesday, that leaders will explore during the summit major issues that include fighting terrorism, the situation in Iraq, the deteriorating situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, in addition to other Gulf economic and developmental issues. The bombing incidents that occurred in Riyadh and Yanbu will also be discussed, as security of the region is a joint responsibility. The upcoming consultative summit is an opportunity to unite Gulf stands before holding the 16th Arab Summit, scheduled to be held in Tunisia on May 22-23, in particular the importance of reforming the Arab League and finding new mechanisms to develop joint Arab work. kuwaitbusiness.net
