Crucial Dubai World debt talks coming up

State-owned conglomerate Dubai World will meet with its creditors next week to formally present revisions to its multi-billion-dollar debt restructuring terms, three sources aware of the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Meetings will take place in London on Dec. 1 and Dubai on Dec. 8 to put a new debt proposal to all creditors, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the information is not public.

A spokesman for Dubai World declined to comment.

The entity has been in talks with some of its lenders to extend the maturity of the largest single repayment under a $25 billion debt restructuring agreement struck in 2011, with a series of incentives offered in exchange.

Dubai World, like other state-owned entities in the emirate, got into debt trouble in the wake of the global financial crisis as loans taken on during the boom years of the mid-2000s could no longer be serviced and the local economy suffered from a real estate crash.

Top Dubai officials have previously confirmed that many of Dubai World’s largest creditors had assented to a restructuring of the restructuring, with the approval of 67 percent of the group needed to change the terms.

Once this level has been achieved, Dubai World can use a local law called Decree 57, brought in to help facilitate the original restructuring, to force the rest of the creditor group to accept the new terms – a process known as a cramdown.-Reuters

Two of the sources said setting the meetings with the full creditor group indicated that Dubai World was now confident it had secured more than the level needed to trigger the cramdown mechanism, thereby presenting the plan to creditors as a fait accompli.