Word: sheiking
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While the Anglophile sheik kept a stiff upper lip, Dubai's inability to pay its debts is a heavy blow to an ego that easily dwarfs Dubai's gleaming new 160-story skyscraper. In the wake of the 2008 global financial meltdown, Sheik Mohammed repeatedly waved off predictions of Dubai's demise, staunchly defended his economic development model and dismissed Western media criticism as a bigoted slur on an Arab success story. "I can safely say that we have succeeded in containing the risks of the global financial crisis in record time," he said last April. Indeed, even...
...years ago, an adviser went to Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum with a plan for a tall office building. "Only 90 stories?" the ruler of Dubai asked. The aide was sent back to the drawing board, with instructions to design the highest structure not just in Dubai, not just in the Middle East, but in the world. When the Burj Dubai has its grand opening in January, it will be an 818-meter monument to the visionary autocrat who dreamed the Dubai dream - and, as it turns out, a conspicuous symbol of the hyper-ambition that now threatens...
...Sheik Mo, as he's dubbed by the media, was tweeting in London last week when officials back home stunned financial markets by announcing a request for a six-month repayment standstill on part of the sheikdom's $80 billion debt. The immediate issue is Dubai's inability to come through on a $3.52 billion tranche due in mid-December. Yet, with some 400 property projects already reportedly frozen in Dubai, the news raised the specter of a gigantic default that would sink exposed creditors around the world. "Inspired by Islamic artifacts," read the sheik's post on Twitter during...
Jealous rivals and cynical pundits will revel in Sheik Mohammed's fall from grace, but none can deny Dubai's remarkable accomplishments - or ignore the fact that only an ambitious dreamer could have made them happen. In the 1980s, when Dubai's neighbors were either hibernating behind a curtain of oil wealth or dabbling, sometimes disastrously, in Middle East politics, Sheik Mohammed began transforming oil-poor Dubai from an Arab backwater into a global city. Within a decade Dubai had a world-class air carrier in Emirates Airlines and a glamorous, iconic "seven-star" hotel, the Burj al-Arab...
...rulers of the United Arab Emirates city-state of Dubai have for months breezily dismissed concerns about Dubai World, the government's main holding company for investments and real estate developments. "We are not worried," said Dubai's Emir, Sheik Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum, at a press conference two months ago, despite the fact that Dubai has debts that are at least 100% of GDP - and may be closer to 125%. When critics later complained that Dubai had no realistic plans for paying off its debts, al-Maktoum told them to "shut up." But on Thursday, as Dubai...