Emaar Boss Bullish on Pakistan

Talking with CNBC today, Mohamed Ali Alabbar, Chairman of Dubai-based Emaar Properties, said he believes Pakistan represents a great investment opportunity for his company as it goes global. In fact, he repeated it twice to convince Erin Burnett, the CNBC anchor, who appeared surprised. Alabbar further said Emaar sold a major project yesterday within hours of launch in Pakistan.

A massive real estate project valued at $43b by Emaar is underway in Pakistan to develop two island resorts near Karachi. This is Emaar's single largest project and supersedes the $26.7 billion King Abdullah Economic City project in Saudi Arabia announced in 2006. This project will include office buildings, shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, apartments, golf courses, and beaches. The two islands will be self-contained cities spread over 30,000 acres of land.

Emaar has already energized the Pakistani economy with development projects worth $2.4 billion. Emaar has unveiled its first master planned community in the country — Canyon Views in Islamabad. The company has also announced the highlands project in Islamabad and Crescent Bay in Karachi. It has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Port Qasim Authority for a mixed-use land development comprising residential, retail, commercial and hospitality components.

Another Dubai-based company, Abraaj Capital, has acquired land in Karachi's financial district to build Karachi Financial Towers (twin-towers) to cater to the booming banking sector in Pakistan.

Apart from creating new job opportunities for Pakistanis, these projects will support ancilliary industries and strengthen foreign investment inflow into the country.

Arif Masud Naqvi Vice-Chairman of Dubai based Abraaj Capital said that Pakistan is a country of enormous business potential, and investors are comfortable and see opportunity rather than risk.

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Here's the latest on Emaar's Crescent Bay as reported by Express Tribune:

The Pakistan Defence Officers Housing Authority (DHA) and the Dubai-based international construction giant Emaar are at loggerheads over the much-advertised and much-delayed 108-acre Crescent Bay project in DHA Phase VIII’s waterfront zone E.

DHA has filed a petition against four companies — Emaar Giga International FZCO, Emaar Giga Karachi Limited, Emaar Properties PJSC and CEO Global Marketing Services (GMS) Shaukat Qureshi — in the Sindh High Court. It won a stay order on June 27 until the next hearing scheduled for July 12, The Express Tribune has learnt.

DHA and Emaar Giga International had signed a memorandum of understanding on May 20, 2004 to construct 46 towers in three ‘uniquely designed’ bays.

According to Emaar Pakistan’s website, each of these three bays was to be “encircled by a community with its own unique look and character, which extends from the architecture to the landscaping and the street furniture.” Crescent Bay One was set to feature a hotel, malls, a waterfront promenade, piazza, four office towers, surrounded by green spaces, parks and plazas. Crescent Bay Two was to house residential towers complete with a Waterfront Retail Arcade running along the beach. Crescent Bay Three was termed the most exclusive of the residential neighborhoods, with controlled vehicle access, and a luxurious waterfront promenade.

However, even though more than seven years have passed since the deal was inked, DHA contends that only two towers and that too only till the second floor have been constructed, even though Emaar has collected more than Rs1.5 billion from its customers in advance.

Moreover, out of the 110 people who were allotted plots in Crescent Bay, 100 of them are in litigation against Emaar and many of them are demanding their money back.

Sources in DHA said that their beef with Emaar was not only due to the fact that the international construction giant owes it Rs600 million, but also because “it was trying to create a DHA within DHA.”

DHA maintains that Emaar was trying to “clandestinely” sell Crescent Bay plots without its permission to “unauthorised parties.” The authority says it was “shocked” to learn through a letter on June 13, 2011 from CEO GMS Qureshi that his marketing company was working with Emaar Giga Karachi for the last 15 months to sell land that had been sub-let by DHA.

On June 25, 2011 DHA officers discovered GMS staff taking measurements and dimensions of the land, which the regulatory body believes was in clear violation of its agreement that mentions that no sale can move ahead unless DHA approves it. DHA immediately removed the GMS personnel from the site and took over possession of the land and the Crescent Bay project itself in “public interest”. It now wants to undertake construction of the two towers which, according to them, Emaar has abandoned.

Senior officials with DHA told The Express Tribune that it was extremely unfortunate that Emaar has not completed its commitments to the people, especially since there were huge expectations from them, given their expertise and long list of successful projects. Although DHA’s experience in mega construction projects is negligible compared to Emaar’s, it believes that with its experience of Creek Vista in Karachi, it can take off from where the international construction stopped....


http://tribune.com.pk/story/204627/dha-takes-over-crescent-bay-project-on-the-rocks/
Riaz Haq said…
How #Pakistani fund manager Arif Naqvi ‘robbed’ $100 million from Bill Gates. He distracted the West with massive #philanthropic grants, giving millions of dollars to major #universities, including Johns Hopkins University in the #UnitedStates. https://nypost.com/2021/08/21/how-bill-gates-was-robbed-of-100-million-by-a-pakistani-conman-2/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons via @nypost

In April 2010, he was invited by President Barack Obama, along with 250 other Muslim business leaders, to a Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. There, Naqvi gave a speech about the importance of impact investing and how a billion children would need training and jobs in the coming decades.

“It can only happen,” Naqvi told the gathering, “through entrepreneurship.”

Two months later, the US government invested $150 million in Abraaj.

Naqvi did put his money where his mouth was — to a point.

After taking control of his local electric company, Karachi Electric, in 2008, Naqvi made the electricity more reliable and the company profitable. But he also reduced the workforce by 6,000 employees, leading to riots.

Meanwhile, he distracted the West with massive charitable grants.

“Arif gave millions of dollars to universities around the world, including Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and the London School of Economics, which named a professorship after Abraaj,” the authors write. “Following in the footsteps of billionaire philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates, Arif started a $100 million charitable organization called the Aman Foundation to improve health care and education in Pakistan.”

But Naqvi also enjoyed the high life, flying around on “a private Gulfstream jet with a personalized tail number — M-ABRJ — and sailed on yachts to meet new investors who could help increase his fortune.”

By 2007, Naqvi had moved into “a palatial new mansion in Dubai’s luxurious, gated Emirates Hills district . . . known as the Beverly Hills of Dubai.”

He was a regular at Davos and similar conferences, where he became friendly with the likes of Gates, who was the guest of honor at a dinner at Naqvi’s home in 2012.

“Bill and Arif had much to discuss,” the authors write. “They agreed that their charitable foundations would work together on a family planning program in Pakistan. Arif seemed to be precisely who Bill was looking for. He was wealthy and concerned for the poor.”

Naqvi was granted a $100 million investment from the Gates Foundation to supposedly invest in hospitals and clinics in emerging markets. This investment, in the new Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund, helped Naqvi attract $900 million more from other investors.

“This is a significant co-investment partnership,” Gates said about the deal. “It is also an example of the kind of smart partnerships that hold huge promise for the future.”

In reality, Naqvi had already started misusing the money with a “secretive treasury department” that not even most of his employees knew about, the authors write.

“Abraaj was really made up of a tangled web of more than three hundred companies based mostly in tax havens around the world.”

Required by regulators to keep millions of dollars in a bank account for emergencies, the account was usually close to empty, the authors write.

“Just before the end of each quarter, when Abraaj Capital had to report to the regulator, Arif and his colleagues moved money into the account to make it seem like it contained the required amount. A few days [later], they emptied the account again.”
Riaz Haq said…
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Riaz Haq said…
THE VIEWS TOWER 2 BY EMAAR
DHA Phase 8, Defence, Karachi


https://hspropertypk.com/property/the-views-tower-ii-by-emaar/

Description
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Offering:
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Central Park
Perfect Location:

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Riaz Haq said…
ALIZEH KOHARI
The road to the city of the future: evictions, demolitions and land reclamation.

https://www.thedial.world/issue-4/karachi-coastline-waterfront-development


“WHO WOULDN’T WANT A SKYLINE IN KARACHI, YAAR?”

WHEN: December 2022

WHERE: An under-construction development on land reclaimed from the Arabian Sea, Defence Housing Authority, Phase-VIII extension, Karachi

The apartment I was being shown did not exist, but no matter — until some decades ago, the ground beneath us didn’t either. On Google Earth, you can see this coastal appendage mutate over time, lengthening and fattening: Little rectangular plots divide and multiply amid fading foliage, extending an expensive Karachi neighborhood, pushing back the Arabian Sea. Inside the apartment that did not yet exist — we were inside a temporary model unit — the sales associate clacked past a six-person dining table to the far end of the living room.

“And here, you have a floor-to-ceiling oceanfront view,” she said brightly. I nodded appreciatively at the blank wall.

Later, we climbed up to the roof of the sales office and watched the construction taking place along the water’s edge. A paraglider swooped over mounds of upturned earth; a black kite dodged the long arm of a tower crane. The sea was pockmarked with distant trawlers. Ground broke on the first of 19 towers last year; when the project is completed, by the end of 2025, this sales office — including the model apartment we just toured — will be dismantled: Its glossy floors and gilded chandeliers exist only to pitch high-end vertical living to deep-pocketed Pakistanis. Alina, whose job it is to sell this dream, grew up in Dubai and is afraid of heights.

“I’d consider it, maybe, if someone gave me the penthouse,” she said, with a shrug.




In Karachi, facts are always in flux. The city is home to 15 million people— or 20, or 30, depending on which account convinces you. It has long been touted as one of the world’s fastest-growing cities, but preliminary census data indicates a possible downtick in population in recent years, findings that will no doubt be hotly contested in coming months. It is a city of opportunity: Like New Yorkers, most Karachi-wallahs are originally from somewhere else, drawn like moths to the metropolis.

Still, to appreciate the current contestation over Karachi, take any small stretch of land — say, along the city’s coastline, which is 90 or 48 or 27 kilometers long, based on whom you cite — and watch it morph before your eyes, like an optical illusion, depending on who is telling its story.
It is a city of danger: Last year, more than 78,000 vehicles and 30,000 mobile phones were snatched at gunpoint; dozens of people were killed when they resisted. (Most people in Karachi can relate multiple genres of mugging stories: absurdist comedy, thriller, tragedy.) A hundred years ago, it was no more than a cluster of small fishing villages. Seventy-five years ago, it was the capital of the new state of Pakistan, welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighboring India. Today, it is violently remaking itself into a city of the future, through evictions, demolitions and land reclamation

[Read: The Dispossession of District Six]



All cities contain multitudes; this is not a particularly astute observation. Still, to appreciate the current contestation over Karachi, take any small stretch of land — say, along the city’s coastline, which is 90 or 48 or 27 kilometers long, based on whom you cite — and watch it morph before your eyes, like an optical illusion, depending on who is telling its story.



The developer of this particular gated community is the scion of a United Arab Emirates-based Pakistani magnate,

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