Tuesday - January 12, 2010

A MOST EXPENSIVE PARTY LAUNCH. BUT THE PARTY’S OVER.

I don’t suppose many of you have followed this story much if at all.  Being somewhat closer to this, Dubai has figured in the news here quite often since this SPECTACULAR opening of the resort for billionaires.  We’ve been buried in beautiful photos of the place and at the beginning there were all these very positive comments and promises for the bright future ahead.
Well, Aladdin’s lamp has gone darkish as the place has all but gone bust.  Empty and decaying (already) apt. complexes, restaurants that either never opened as scheduled or if they did have now closed.  Nowadays the photos we see of this grandiose dream are sadly not so forward looking and the future does indeed look grim.  The developers had hoped that one of the rich Arab countries might shovel in some needed cash, and they did indeed get some from one of the Arab states.  I forgot which one.

Dubai is a place where a person goes to jail for an offense like a bounced check. They are very serious about that.
Photos we see now show expensive cars simply left in the street to collect dust as the owners have walked away, broke. They have left homes and apts the same way.  Simply abandoned and very many have had to sneak out of the country. Not that they were involved in any criminal activity mind you.  But they found the bubble had burst and their funds were either non existent or near to being so.  They could no longer pay the staggering bills and faced jail, and so left.  Many others have stayed trying as best they can to salvage something.  The people one really has to feel sorry for, are the many who were recruited to work there as waiters and maids and low level jobs, who came from foreign countries and are now at the mercy of ppl who don’t have a large supply of that.  While the money wasn’t huge by our standards, it was by the standards of the countries they were recruited from. 

Until today, I hadn’t seen this 2008 video.  In ‘08 I was busy 27/7 helping the wife with a bed ridden elderly mother and I guess I missed a lot.
Better late then never though because this really is a sight to see.  Notice the cost of the party.  They didn’t.

Dubai resort The Atlantis stages most expensive launch party ever
The global recession may be biting, but try telling that to the Hollywood celebrities and billionaire business moguls who attended the opening of Dubai’s latest luxury resort, The Atlantis.

By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor
Published: 4:07PM GMT 20 Nov 2008

More than 2,000 guests attended the event on the man-made Palm Jumeirah island in the Persian Gulf. Robert De Niro, Janet Jackson, Denzel Washington and Lindsay Lohan were among them, while the British contingent included the Duchess of York, Sir Richard Branson, Dame Shirley Bassey, retail boss Sir Philip Green, television presenter Trinny Woodall and the singer Lily Allen.

They feasted on lobster and Middle Eastern mezze and the Veuve Clicquot champagne flowed freely, although the presence of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, and a sizeable number of other Muslim guests ensured that the drinks bill was relatively modest.

Security at the party was so tight that a two-mile exclusion zone was thrown around the island.

Kylie Minogue performed on stage for a reported £1.5 million fee but the real entertainment of the night was provided by the pyrotechnics. One million fireworks – almost 10 times the scale of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony – lit up the Palm, with the organisers claiming the display was visible from space.

Even in Dubai, a part of the world renowned for excess, there had never been a party like it.

“We built something that’s quite extraordinary. We’ve got to tell the world about it,” said Sol Kerzner, the South African billionaire hotelier and casino tycoon.

The 1,539-room Atlantis took two years to build and cost £1 billion. Mr Kerzner admitted that the global economic downturn would have an effect on business.

“We are in a challenging time. The economy is basically in a recession and we have to adjust to the changing circumstances. We have to be careful with our cost levels” he said, although he did not believe he had splashed out too much on his guests: “I didn’t lay on private jets. They either came in their own private jets or by regular airline.”

Colin Cowie, the party planner, likened the logistics of organising the beachside party to the Normandy landings. He added: “People say, ‘How do you have a party like this in these economic times?’ But the funds were allocated a year ago, and you have to dream big to get a big result.”

THE PARTY’S OVER

From The Times
November 28, 2009

The spectre of “Financial Crisis 2” continued to loom over global markets yesterday after Dubai’s revelation that it may not be able to meet its debt obligations.

Stock markets in Asia and the United States fell sharply while the dollar and Japanese yen rose as investors shifted their money to their perceived safety.

UK banks were also revealed to be the biggest lenders to the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, with more than $50 billion owed by the Gulf state’s residents.

In another blow to the beleaguered UK banking sector, the Royal Bank of Scotland emerged as the largest single loan-arranger to Dubai World, the state-owned conglomerate that sparked this latest financial crisis when it sought a standstill on its debt repayments on Wednesday.
Related Links

RBS, which is owned by British taxpayers, has arranged loans worth up to $2.3 billion to Dubai World.

The Financial Services Authority, the regulator, is understood to have sought assurances from banks that their exposure to Dubai will not threaten their financial strength. The FSA said it would continue to keep a close eye on the situation.

Dubai World, which owns a range of assets including the Turnberry golf club in southwest Scotland, sparked panic when it asked for the debt standstill. The company has liabilities of $60 billion and its Nakheel property division, which built the Palm Jumeirah development where the footballers David Beckham and Michael Owen own houses, was due to repay a $3.5 billion bond next month.

The standstill has raised the prospect that Dubai World and, by extension, the government of Dubai might default on their debt.

TIMES

Here’s a link for a lot of other links on the subject.  Makes for some fascinating reading.

BYE-BYE-DUBAI

notice the dates on these two stories. didn’t take long.

Posted by peiper     on 01/12/2010 at 11:03 AM   
Filed Under: • Big Business • Economics • Finance and Investing • International • Middle-East •  
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