Damac Investment making efforts to reduce losses

DUBAI — Damac Investment, the financial arm of Damac Real Estate and Catering, is making efforts to cut out the losses sustained as a result of the sharp decline in securities of IT or the so-called dot.com or electronic portals since the beginning of 2001.

These losses forced a large number of Arab and Gulf companies investing in the stocks of American IT corporations to retire after suffering grave losses.

According to US sources, the losses of the e-portal technology are estimated at US$3 trillion where the losses of Gulf investors amounted to US$ 3 billion as Gulf companies adopted the management of stocks on behalf of investors in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Damac's share in these losses was not minor, and as a result the company adopted a new course to create other investment brackets in different sectors, including real estate, to make good of the damages.  The sources pointed out that Damac has powerfully and firmly started to improve its financial position by constructing commercial and residential properties under the projects floated in the UAE.

(A second report, by way of follow-up, carried in the daily in February, 2004, about which too a mention was made before the court, will be reprinted in these columns separately — due to space constraints — tomorrow.)