Amlak Finance plans to re-list its shares on the Dubai Financial Market this month after an absence of more than six years.
The Sharia-compliant home finance company, in which Dubai’s Emaar Properties has a 45 per cent stake, had won shareholder approval last month to resume trading.
Amlak completed a restructuring of US$2.7 billion worth of debt last August, paving the way for the firm’s shares, suspended since November 2008, to resume trading.
The deal with 28 creditors broke the impasse that had cast a shadow on the UAE mortgage market since the height of the global financial crisis.
Amlak was an immediate casualty of the credit crunch in 2008, when it was unable to tap global credit markets to service its mortgage business. Protracted negotiations to merge Amlak with its rival Tamweel were finally aborted when the latter was taken over by Dubai Islamic Bank.
Amlak yesterday reported a 62.5 per cent drop in first-quarter net profit to Dh6 million from Dh16m a year earlier. Revenue fell 15 per cent in the first quarter to Dh105m because of its decreasing real estate portfolio, the firm said.
“Amlak has just turned a very challenging corner given our recent restructuring and we are now working hard towards rebuilding our business capacity and new originations, which has been absent from the market for many years,” said the Amlak managing director Arif Alharmi.
dalsaadi@thenational.ae
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