Dubai Investments is assessing acquisitions in healthcare, education and other sectors and will soon start a new real estate project worth Dh1 billion in Ras Al Khaimah as the UAE's economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
"We are positioning ourselves to move ahead. We look at the market changes and market trends and we choose whatever we think will definitely give a good return to the shareholders," chief executive Khalid Bin Kalban told The National in an interview.
Set up in 1995, Dubai Investments – in which Dubai’s sovereign wealth fund Investment Corporation of Dubai holds an 11.54 per cent stake – has companies involved in a range of sectors including real estate, industrial, financial services, healthcare and education. It owns businesses such as Dubai Investments Park, venture capital company Masharie, Al Mal Capital and district cooling company Emicool.
Dubai Investments last month increased its stake in National General Insurance Company to 29.99 per cent and "aims to buy more into the company", Mr Bin Kalban said.
Earlier this week, the company reported a Dh123.8 million profit for the three months to March 31, compared to a Dh6.8m loss in the same period last year as total income increased by more than 37 per cent to Dh637.6m.
Dubai Investments' healthcare holdings include KCH Healthcare London, which manages King’s College clinics and hospitals in Dubai as well as Clemenceau Medicine International – an affiliate of Johns Hopkins International with medical centres in Lebanon, Riyadh and Dubai Healthcare City. It also owns Globalpharma, which manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products across the Middle East.
In the education sector, it owns two universities – Modul University Dubai and University of Balamund Dubai. It plans to expand in the education sector in Africa, where it has already built a school in Nairobi and has two under construction in Egypt. More are planned in Egypt and Morocco, Mr Bin Kalban said.
Dubai Investments is also in “serious discussions to establish something like Dubai Investments Park in Egypt and Angola”, Mr Bin Kalban said.
“Hopefully, [we] will make a conclusion by year end on this front. So if that comes, that would be a great help for Dubai Investments to expand outside our conventional market.”
He did not provide details on the total size or level of investment planned for these projects. Dubai Investments Park is a mixed-use industrial, commercial and residential free zone spread across 2,300 hectares near Al Maktoum International Airport. The site hosts more than 4,600 companies serving a range of sectors including oil and gas, construction and pharmaceutical industries.
In the real estate sector, Dubai Investments plans to launch a new project in Ras Al Khaimah with a total cost of Dh1bn in 2021, he said.
“We just finished the master plan for it in Murjan Island. It will have 170 villas, a hotel, serviced apartments and retail units. Demand for such projects is very high in Ras Al Khaimah.”
Property prices in the UAE are expected to stabilise in 2021 as the economy recovers from a coronavirus pandemic-induced slowdown and government initiatives spur growth. New programmes such as visas for expatriate retirees and the expansion of the 10-year golden visa scheme to attract foreign professionals to the UAE are also expected to support the sector.
“Real estate market in Dubai is showing positive signs and there is a good level of demand coming from abroad. We have a lot of enquiries for our properties and this year looks much better than 2020,” Mr Bin Kalban said.
The company plans to sell Dh800m worth of residential units in 2021.
Dubai Investments is also delivering a Dh500m project in Fujairah with shopping malls, residential and office towers and a hotel as well as a Dh3bn mixed-use scheme in Mirdif with over 1,000 residential units, an office building and a hotel.
“Hopefully we will take the [Mirdif] project soon from the contractor as it is almost completed. We have already started leasing the mall. We will open the hotel by the end of summer.”
The company will finance new deals through a mix of bank loans and its own cash, Mr Bin Kalban said.
“We do have reasonable liquidity within the company and our cash flow generated by group companies will help us develop those projects. We will resort to bank borrowing and we have good relations with the banks and have a good line of credit with them.”
The company also plans to start a digital bank. The application for this is “pending with the authorities even though we raised the capital”, he said.
It will be “more or less an investment bank with private banking activity, [wealth] management and investing in financial products”, he said.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Terror attacks in Paris, November 13, 2015
- At 9.16pm, three suicide attackers killed one person outside the Atade de France during a foootball match between France and Germany
- At 9.25pm, three attackers opened fire on restaurants and cafes over 20 minutes, killing 39 people
- Shortly after 9.40pm, three other attackers launched a three-hour raid on the Bataclan, in which 1,500 people had gathered to watch a rock concert. In total, 90 people were killed
- Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorists, did not directly participate in the attacks, thought to be due to a technical glitch in his suicide vest
- He fled to Belgium and was involved in attacks on Brussels in March 2016. He is serving a life sentence in France
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Zayed Sustainability Prize
Dubai works towards better air quality by 2021
Dubai is on a mission to record good air quality for 90 per cent of the year – up from 86 per cent annually today – by 2021.
The municipality plans to have seven mobile air-monitoring stations by 2020 to capture more accurate data in hourly and daily trends of pollution.
These will be on the Palm Jumeirah, Al Qusais, Muhaisnah, Rashidiyah, Al Wasl, Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park.
“It will allow real-time responding for emergency cases,” said Khaldoon Al Daraji, first environment safety officer at the municipality.
“We’re in a good position except for the cases that are out of our hands, such as sandstorms.
“Sandstorms are our main concern because the UAE is just a receiver.
“The hotspots are Iran, Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, but we’re working hard with the region to reduce the cycle of sandstorm generation.”
Mr Al Daraji said monitoring as it stood covered 47 per cent of Dubai.
There are 12 fixed stations in the emirate, but Dubai also receives information from monitors belonging to other entities.
“There are 25 stations in total,” Mr Al Daraji said.
“We added new technology and equipment used for the first time for the detection of heavy metals.
“A hundred parameters can be detected but we want to expand it to make sure that the data captured can allow a baseline study in some areas to ensure they are well positioned.”
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Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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Fortuna Dusseldorf v Paderborn (4.30pm)
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Analysis
Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more
