All large Dubai-owned companies suffered in the financial downturn of 2009 and 2010, and some were found so severely lacking in liquidity that their survival was in doubt. Under a barrage of hysterical international news coverage, many assumed that Dubai would never recover again.
But in the event, Dubai quietly got on with the business of becoming one of the world’s major commercial and transport hubs, and as its excellent infrastructure helped the economy recover, its companies also recovered.
Dubai’s economic recovery has been so marked that Nakheel, the government-owned property developer, has announced that it will repay its entire outstanding Dh7.9 billion bank debt almost four years ahead of schedule. A few months ago its chairman, Ali Rashid Lootah, said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We will keep looking at ways to cut costs.”
A few months later, he has been proven right. It is almost certain that this good news from Dubai will not make the massive headlines that all the bad news did a few years ago, but this lack of coverage does not change the reality that Dubai is back in business and ready to continue.
