A Saudi millionaire splurged $136,000 on a bottle of champagneat Dubai’s glitzy Cavalli club over the weekend, a UAE newspaper reported on Tuesday.
“The Saudi Arabian and his friends guzzled” a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal in the early hours of Saturday morning, the 7DAYS newspaper said.
The vintage bottle was “one of just three believed to be available worldwide,” the paper added. The other two were for sale at nightclubs in New York and London.
According to 7DAYS, the Cristal bottle was from a “batch made in 1990 in Champagne, France,” originally intended for the Millenium celebrations.
Club’s manager David Lescarret would not divulge the Saudi’s total bill for the night, saying only that it was “very high” and included a “luxurious dinner.”
The manager said the Cavalli club bought the champagne at a Christie’s auction house in London at a cost of around $93,000.
Source: luxuo.com, HM
Arab owners have dominated the list of the word’s’ top superyachts, taking seven of the top ten rankings. The new compilation from superyachts.com – based on length of yachts – places Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich as the owner of the world’s top superyacht, with his “Eclipse” measured at 164m in length. Just two metres shorter and in second place on the list is Dubai Ruler HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum with his “Dubai” superyacht. The Sultan of Oman’s 155m “Al Said” was third, with the Saudi royal family yacht “Prince Abdulaziz” fourth on 147m. The Abu Dhabi owned “Yas” is the highest new entry on the list, placed sixth at 141m, two metres longer than “Al Salamah”, owned by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. The Emir of Qatar’s 133m yacht “Al Mirqab” was placed tenth of the list.
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Source: arabianbusiness.com
Qatar has been ranked as the world’s wealthiest country in a new list compiled by US magazine Forbes, with the UAE placed sixth. The Gulf emirate of 1.7 million people topped the list as the world’s richest country per capita thanks to a rebound in oil prices and its massive natural gas reserves. Adjusted for purchasing power, Qatar booked an estimated gross domestic product per capita of more than $88,000 for 2010, Forbes said, compared with $47,500 for the UAE. Kuwait was placed 15th in the list.
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Source: arabianbusiness.com
Football giant Real Madrid has teamed up with the government of Ras Al Khaimah to develop a billion dollar football theme park.
The Real Madrid Resort Island is expected to open in January 2015. According to a statement on the Real Madrid website, it will be the ‘first recreational tourism complex built under the Real Madrid trademark’.
“When the Real Madrid Resort Island opens its gates, visitors will become part of the legend of this club, which strives to be eternal and universal,” said Florentino Perez, the club’s president, in the statement. “We adhere our name and potential to a unique location, a strategic meeting place and a project of unprecedented dimension located less than four hours away by flight of 2,000 million people.
“Real Madrid and the Government of Ras Al Khaimah want to transmit the passion of Real Madrid and what it means throughout the world.”
The resort will cover an area of 50 hectares and is being badged as a sports tourism complex. A key feature will be a stadium being described as the first to be ‘open to the sea’. A theme park, Real Madrid museum, marina and other sports facilities are to be included in the development, along with a residential area and hotels.
Dr. Khater Massaad, CEO of RAK Investment Authority, represented the Government of Ras Al Khaimah at the project’s launch event, along with Louis Armand de Rouge, RAK Participations & RAK Marjan Island Football CEO.
In a report in the Financial Times de Rouge described the project as ‘strategic’ and ‘unique’. “There are already many high-profile people in the region invested in football, but not in this way,” he said in the report.
Source: constructionweekonline.com
The UK government is in talks to sell a significant stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to Abu Dhabi, the BBC reported on Monday.
The government, which controls 82 percent of RBS, could sell up to a third of its stake to Abu Dhabi, it said.
A Treasury spokesperson told the BBC that the government’s aim was “to repair and return RBS to full health so that it is able to support the UK economy in the future, and the current strategy is working to achieve that.”
“The Government’s policy has always been to return RBS to the private sector, but only when it delivers value for money for the taxpayer,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
In 2008-9, the UK government invested £45.5bn of taxpayers’ money in RBS, to prevent the bank from collapsing.
The BBC said the deal could see at least 10 percent and up to one third of the government’s stake sold.
It added that while no deal is imminent, the government hopes that one can be agreed before Christmas.
A spokesperson for RBS said any possible sale of the government’s stake was “a matter for UKFI and the board of whatever company is thinking of buying shares in RBS”.
Abu Dhabi has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. According to an estimate of the Economist it is worth an estimated £550bn ($875bn).
Abu Dhabi has bought stakes in a number of companies including Daimler, Virgin Galactic and the Mercedes F1 team.
Source: arabianbusiness.com
Source: youtube.com
Source: youtube.com
Bentley Motors, the luxury UK car maker, plans to invest up to $9m in the next six months on its Middle East operations in a bid to capitalise on the region’s soaring car sales. The Volkswagen-owned brand sold 7,000 cars in the region in 2011, bucking the slowdown in car demand seen in larger markets such as the US and Europe.
“It not the biggest market in the world, but it has been very consistent,” said Chris Buxton, regional director for the Middle East, Africa & India. “Bigger markets like the US and Europe have dipped, but here it was very consistent.”
The car maker saw three percent growth in the region during 2011, brushing off the impact of the Arab Spring revolutions.
“There is a lot of investment going on here,” Buxton said in an interview at the Qatar Motor Show. “Over the next four or five months it is probably five or six million pounds ($9.3m) worth of investment.”
The global car industry was hit hard by the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and recovered only partially last year. But the Gulf’s has proved a growing market for luxury car sales, with a slew of brands racking up record figures over the last 12 months. Rolls Royce named the UAE and Saudi Arabia as its fourth and fifth biggest markets worldwide in December, after seeing a 23 percent rise in vehicle sales in 2011. German car maker Audi also reported 26.8 percent regional growth, after selling 7,865 cars in the region last year. Volkswagen, in which Qatar’s wealth firm holds a 17 percent stake in, saw car sales across the region increase by 21 percent last year, compared to a global average of 13 percent. In the UAE, the Gulf’s largest luxury car market, high-end cars account for some nine percent of the country’s auto sales. Buxton said Bentley planned to capitalise on rising demand with the launch of the brand’s largest workshop worldwide in Dubai. New showrooms are also planned for Abu Dhabi and Jeddah.
The brand is forecasting “double-digit growth” over the next 12 months, he added.
Luxury Italian carmaker Lamborghini said it has a two-year waiting list in the Middle East for its newest models.
“The Middle East grew from 2010 to 2011 by more than 80 percent. It has a higher penetration that the average,” said Stephan Winkelmann, president and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini.
“We will grow at least another 50 percent this year. We are sold out with our Aventador production and this is creating a bottleneck for all the market.”
Source: arabianbusiness.com
The Al Habtoor Group, a UAE-based development firm, plans to build a new triple-hotel complex in the heart of the Emirate as part of a $1.3 billion project. The “Habtoor Palace”. formed of two skyscrapers rising from a five-storey podium base, will see over 1,600 rooms added to Dubai’s hotel scene. The rest of the complex is designed as a ‘lifestyle experience,’ Al Habtoor says, with a luxury spa and multiple restaurants and banqueting facilities. The attraction will also include a huge theater, complete with a hydraulic central stage, water features and movable floors. A designer shopping arcade and sports academy will top off the project, Al Habtoor says, while 37,000 square meters of gardens will also be included. Although the project isn’t likely to get underway until later this year and won’t be complete until 2015, concerns have already been raised about the effect of the extra rooms on the Dubai hotel scene, where supply already far outstrips demand.
Source: luxuo.com
Drivers along Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road, used to adverts plugging international luxury retail names, now see a locally-owned brand decorating billboards as they drive down the strip.
The advert featuring Harrods, the luxury London department store snapped up by the Qatari royal family in 2010, plays into a campaign to ramp up the store’s appeal to wealthy tourists – including some of its highest spenders: GCC shoppers.
“There are a lot of areas in Harrods that are more geared around domestic tourists and that may change as the UK domestic tourist drops off and international tourism grows – I think capitalising on that is key,” said Jonathan De Mello, retail analyst at London-based CBRE.
“It’s not just a case of [attracting] Middle East or Gulf customers; it’s also a wider expansion to…high-net-worth individuals in growing markets; the Chinese, the Nigerians and the Thais are apparently the next big thing in relation to growth customers.”
Harrods’s new owners have spent £32.7m ($50m) upgrading the store, installing 150 video screens designed to display the very latest in luxury advertising, adding six new restaurant spaces, a new luxury watch room late and payment systems that accept Chinese credit cards.
Source: arabianbusiness.com