Nakheel cuts customers a deal

Billed as a development twice the size of Hong Kong Island, the billboard announcing Dubai’s mammoth Waterfront project now sags from its frame beside the Sheikh Zayed highway.

Waterfront and its parent company Nakheel are among the most high-profile victims of Dubai’s property crash. Local and international investors, bankers and real estate agents have been fretting how Nakheel, the property developer, will meet a series of loan payments due this year and next.

But now a mechanism has taken root allowing the Dubai government-owned company to unwind contracts in certain developments, such as Waterfront, that are unlikely to see the light of day.