Dubai hunting for italian real estate

Italy calls, Dubai answers. In the real estate sector the business between the rich city of the Gulf and the Italian companies is in the beginning, with good prospectives of success. The bonding agent is the consistent liquidity which circulates in the city of the United Arab Emirates and the presence of quality products in Italy. Recently, this week's announcement by the company Zabeel Investments, owned by a son of the Emir Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and with a real estate portfolio of $5 billion, which plans to invest in the U.S. real estate market, given the slump of the prices due to the subprime mortgage crisis. Dubai World has also recently announced it will sell some properties in London and New York to direct its investments mainly in Asia, where a higher growth in prices is expected. In order to understand the dimensions, the company, just outside Dubai, owns real estate assets valued at $20 billion. Last February 15 it announced an investment of $200 million to build a resort with a golf course along the coast of Mozambique. The nearby Abu Dhabi is not joking either, for example with Waha Capital which again in the past days announced by 20101 investments for more than four billion dollars in real estate transactions. One must have luxury products in order to sell to the Arabs. Nicola Volpes, vice president of the real estate group of the same name, knows something about that, after in a little time having sold properties for some 12 million euro. Apartments in the centre of Rome and villas in Sardinia, especially in Porto Cervo, these are the deals that Volpes struck to which add in Vittorio Veneto other real estates sold to the family of the emir of Dubai. ''Where - explains Volpes who operates on the spot as Omnia network - one enters in contact with the richest social strata also of Indians, Iraqis, Iranians and Pakistani who moved in the Emirates or who bought a house there.'' It is not necessary to enter in the benevolence of the emir. Gabetti Property Solutions, with La Gaiana brand, works with the Arab groups Damac and Vakson to which it will soon propose luxury products with the Sant'Andrea brand, specialised in luxury. Also thanks to this opening - explains Massimiliano Bernes, co-director of investments of Gaiana - of a representative office on the main street of the Gulf city. Among the listed companies, Pirelli RE currently does not seem interested in a specific action in the area unlike Risanamento which, mainly with the pproject Santa Giulia signed by Norman Foster, has a product that might attract the interest of financial groups of the Emirates. According to what Il Sole 24 Ore learned, this week Luigi Zunino will be in Dubai to probe the idea. A total 2% in Aedes is held by Dubai Investment Group (the Italian company however has chosen Bahrain as base to operate in the Gulf) while for weeks Investment Corporation of Dubai is officially interested in buying Spanish Colonial.
Enrico Bronzo Il Sole 24 ore-February 24 2008