|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai’s government owned property developer Limitless will make an early payment of 2.07 billion dirhams ($564 million) to banks and trade creditors after reaching a second debt restructuring deal with them, Bloomberg reported.
The company will pay 1.9 billion dirhams to banks this month, covering 43 percent of the outstanding loan amount, Limitless said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday. It will pay 163 million dirhams to trade creditors, or about 28 percent of the amount owed, it said.
Under the agreement, Limitless is required to pay outstanding bank debt of 4.45 billion dirhams in three installments in December 2016, 2017 and 2018. The payments this month will cover the first installment and 80 percent of the second, it said.
Limitless began talks to restructure the $1.2 billion Islamic loan for a second time in 2014. The company raised $517 million from selling half of its land bank in Saudi Arabia last year, but was withholding that payment to creditors until a deal was agreed, according to people familiar with the matter. The company plans to raise about $650 million from selling land around Dubai’s main port in Jebel Ali and other assets to pay remaining debt, people familiar with the matter said.
Limitless was one of several Dubai-owned companies that were forced to reschedule debt payments after credit markets froze and asset prices slumped during the global financial crisis. Emirates NBD PJSC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi PJSC, Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC, Mashreqbank PSC, Arab National Bank and Silver Point Capital LP were part of the creditors’ committee that was negotiating a deal on behalf of lenders, three people familiar with the company’s restructuring said last year. (With Bloomberg)
