Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD) has acquired a controlling stake in the troubled South Korean construction firm Ssangyong Engineering & Construction, according to media reports.
The Seoul-based JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and Yonhap News Agency reported last week that the Dubai sovereign wealth fund behind Emirates Airline, Emaar Properties and Emirates NBD signed a deal last Thursday to acquire the construction company for 200 billion Korean won (Dh667.7 million).
ICD was named as preferred bidder for the construction company in December, according to reports in the Korean press, ahead of the Korean companies Samra Midas Group and Steel & Resources.
A senior executive at ICD contacted by The National declined to comment on the reports. Ssangyong could not be reached for comment.
Ssangyong, best known as the main contractor behind the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore, was one of South Korea’s largest construction companies. After being hit hard by Asia’s financial crisis of 1997-98, the company was successfully restructured in 2004.
However, it has again experienced severe debt issues as a result of the global financial crisis, and was delisted from the Korean stock exchange last year.
The company has since early last year been under court receivership, which is now expected to end in late March.
Several previous attempts to sell off the company in the past seven years have ended in failure.
Ssangyong has a long history of construction contracts in the Middle East, notably the Hadeed iron and steel mill and Jubail desalination plant, both in Saudi Arabia.
In September 2012 the company secured a deal to build a water treatment plant and transmission and storage facilities in northern Iraq.
jeverington@thenational.ae
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