Word: khalifas
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...biggest state-owned development company had declared it was unable to pay its debts. Officially, Dubai owes its creditors $80 billion, though a recent report by regional investment bank EFG-Hermes estimates that the city may be in the hole for as much as $170 billion. After Sheik Khalifa al-Nahyan, the oil-rich ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi, stepped in with $10 billion to stave off an embarrassing default, the skyscraper's owners changed the building's name to Burj Khalifa. For a city used to grand statements, it was a remarkable comedown. (See pictures of the world...
Still, Qatar insists it is not trying to become the next Dubai. Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar's ruler, doesn't want to make his country a global capital, so much as use his nation's gas resources to move what was once a tribal, Bedouin society into the modern world with Muslim culture and values intact. Qatar, say state officials, will never try to do the kind of high-volume business that put Dubai on the map but also made it so vulnerable to a speculative bubble. "Dubai is all about numbers and bringing in huge infrastructure...
That won't happen easily. This week the owners of Burj Khalifa indefinitely closed its observation deck, the highest in the world, due to unspecified electrical problems. Like Dubai itself, the problem will, eventually, be solved. And the view then, say the city's boosters, will be fantastic. - With reporting by Maria Abi-Habib / Dubai...
There's a fine line between confidence and hubris, and it's easy to conclude that Dubai and its real estate developers crossed it when they planned the newly opened Burj Khalifa, which, at 2,717 ft. (828 m), is by far the tallest building in the world. Since the skyscraper was planned, the tiny emirate's go-go boom has stalled, and its real estate bubble popped. But there's another way to look at the Burj Khalifa--which you can do on a clear day from 60 miles (100 km) away. The building supplanted an unlovely tower...
...years, it was. After the Hôtel Lambert was built in 1639 by architect Louis Le Vau on Paris's Ile Saint Louis, the mansion played host to French nobility, exiled Polish princes and members of the Rothschild family of banking fame. But for Qatari Prince Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani, who bought the property from the Rothschilds in 2007 for $88 million, the welcome has been far from regal...