Danube vows jobs shield in Dubai

Dubai-based Danube Group has said it will retain its full workforce and keep salary payments on schedule, with founder and chairman Rizwan Sajan telling staff the company will not resort to layoffs even as businesses across the Gulf navigate the strain of regional conflict, supply disruption and shakier investor sentiment. The assurance, carried in a public message from Sajan and echoed in local business coverage, applies to the group’s 6,000-plus employees.

The pledge lands at a moment when corporate leaders in Dubai are being pressed to show how they will handle a tougher operating climate. Reuters reported this week that Gulf markets have remained volatile as investors weigh the economic impact of the Iran war, while Dubai has announced a 1 billion dirham support package for businesses and families to cushion the blow from regional instability. That backdrop helps explain why a no-layoff commitment from a major private employer is drawing attention beyond the company itself: it speaks to labour confidence, consumer spending and the wider question of whether Dubai’s private sector can hold its nerve under pressure.

Sajan framed the decision in personal terms, saying Danube’s employees had helped build the group “brick by brick” and that management had a responsibility to stand by them in harder times. The language is designed to reassure staff, but it also fits Danube’s long-cultivated identity as a founder-led enterprise that tries to present itself as loyal to its workforce. His LinkedIn post and parallel reports in Khaleej Times, Arabian Business and Gulf Business all carry the same central message: no layoffs, and salaries paid on time.

Danube has reason to protect that image. The group has grown from a trading business founded in Dubai in 1993 into a diversified conglomerate spanning building materials, home retail and property. Company and official profiles describe it as a large regional operator, while public biographies of Sajan place the business in the multibillion-dirham bracket. Danube Properties, one of the best-known arms of the group, says it has launched 32 projects, delivered 16 and has another 16 under construction, underlining how exposed the company is to confidence in the property and construction cycle.

That exposure matters because Dubai’s property market, after a long boom, is no longer being discussed only in terms of growth. Reuters reported in March that the sector was facing its first meaningful test after missile strikes and wider regional conflict dented the emirate’s safe-haven appeal. A later Reuters report said analysts were already seeing weaker transaction volumes and some price cuts, even though parts of the market continued to show resilience. For companies tied to construction, real estate sales and household spending, labour stability can become both a financial calculation and a reputational signal.

At the same time, the broader economic picture is not uniformly bleak. S&P Global’s UAE PMI showed the non-oil private sector reaching a 12-month high in February, pointing to stronger output and business activity before the latest escalation in regional tensions fully fed through supply chains and sentiment. That contrast is important. Danube’s promise comes not from a company in collapse, but from one operating in an economy where core activity has remained solid while geopolitical risk has become harder to ignore.

There is also precedent behind the statement. During the Covid period, Danube said it avoided layoffs, later restored salary cuts and rehired workers, according to reports in Khaleej Times and Gulf News. That history does not guarantee the same outcome in a new downturn, but it gives Sajan’s latest position more weight than a one-off public relations line. It suggests a pattern in which the group sees workforce protection as part of its business philosophy, and perhaps as a way to preserve loyalty in a labour market where retention can be difficult and costly.

For Dubai’s business community, the announcement is likely to be read in two ways. Supporters will see it as a vote of confidence in the city’s ability to absorb shocks without falling into a broad corporate retrenchment. More sceptical observers may argue that such pledges are easier to make at the start of a crisis than to sustain if shipping disruption, weaker home sales or tighter liquidity persist. Reuters has already shown that conflict-linked uncertainty is hitting everything from equities to autos and property, meaning even companies with strong branding are not insulated from a prolonged squeeze.