Focus on Dubai World debt issue

Pascal Devaux* Dubai World (DW) announced on November 25 a six-month (until May 30, 2010) standstill on the group’s debt in order to have time to restructure the conglomerate. Repayment issues from government related corporates (GRC) in Dubai are not new. Since mid-2008, the highly leveraged balance sheets of GRCs in a context of the credit crunch have raised fears that these ompanies will have difficulties to meet their financial obligations. Those difficulties are exacerbated by the short-term...