The name Nakheel still prompts a raised eyebrow from many investors in Dubai who watched the company’s dramatic fall from grace during the Dubai World crisis in 2009.
Back during the boom, the company formed one of a triumvirate of semi-state owned Dubai master developers along with Emaar and Dubai Properties Group, intent on building the city’s biggest mega-schemes.
Nakheel has been the author of some of Dubai’s most ambitious schemes. Not just the Palm Jumeirah, but two more palm tree-shaped islands at Jebel Ali and Deira. Not just the vast exotic themed Ibn Battuta shopping mall or Chinese themed Dragon Mart, but The World, a vast collection of islands shaped like a map.
And then there were even more ambitious projects that never got off the ground, including plans for the Nakheel Tower which, had it ever been built, would have been the world’s tallest at more than 1 kilometre in height.
Nakheel used to be part of the mega-corporation Dubai World, which rocked international money markets when it asked to delay its debt repayments in 2009.
Schemes stalled, losing money for many people, and Nakheel was taken over by the Dubai government in 2011.
News that the company is now firmly back in the black, has paid off its debts four years ahead of schedule and has no further need for financial aid from the government is perhaps as much a result of the Dubai property rebound of 2012 and 2013 as it is of the careful leadership of Ali Rashid Lootah.
Mr Lootah is the engineer parachuted in by the Dubai government to sort out the mess.
However, the figures unveiled yesterday should be treated with a degree of caution. Unlike its listed competitors, Nakheel is under no obligation to give out audited financial results, so the limited numbers provided by the company provide only a partial picture of its finances.
News that Nakheel is likely to launch an IPO at some point has not been greeted by investors with the skepticism one might have expected had the prospect been raised a few years ago.
Generally the investment community seems ready to welcome Nakheel back into the fold with open arms as and when it decides to start serious borrowing again to fund new schemes. And yet with global oil prices still proving a drag on the Dubai markets, the prospect still seems some way off.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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