U.A.E. Bankruptcy Law Needed to Prevent Problems, Official Says

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The United Arab Emirates must pass a bankruptcy law to help mitigate future financial difficulties of the type being experienced by some of the region’s largest companies, a Dubai Chamber of Commerce official said today.

“Proper due diligence must be conducted to know what is the health of the companies and their suppliers and what kind of difficulties the companies are going through,” Hisham Al Shirawi, vice chairman of the chamber said today in an interview in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. “Once we have all of those factors addressed properly, then we can have a proper bankruptcy law.”

The law would involve stricter criteria than current U.S. legislation, he said. Passage of the new law will probably coincide with a move to raise foreign ownership limits from the current 49 percent, he said.