MGM, Dubai World Refinancing $1.8 Billion CityCenter Bank Loan
MGM Resorts International and Dubai World, owners of the CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip, are seeking to refinance the property’s $1.8 billion loan to extend maturities.
MGM Resorts, the biggest casino operator on the Strip, would like to own all of CityCenter eventually, Chief Executive Officer Jim Murren said today in an interview. No buyout talks have been held with Dubai World, but the partnership has a five- year agreement that gives MGM the right to purchase the other’s half if it’s sold, Murren said.
CityCenter, the $8.5 billion joint venture that opened in Las Vegas in December after skirting potential bankruptcy, includes hotels, condominiums, the Aria casino and Crystals mall. MGM Resorts said this month CityCenter’s cash flow turned positive in the third quarter, after losing money for the first six months. In August, the joint venture’s equity value was written down to $2.65 billion.
“I certainly would like to own it long term,” Murren said in the interview in New York. “CityCenter and Aria specifically are already showing the signs that it’s going to emerge as one of the profit leaders in the market.”
MGM and other casino companies including Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. and Boyd Gaming Corp. are tapping public markets and refinancing debt as a record slump in Las Vegas eases and casino bonds rally.
New Loans
The partners are “in the market now” to replace CityCenter’s loan with new financing that matures in five to eight years, Murren said. The refinancing will be completed before the end of March, because CityCenter will “most likely” not be compliance with covenants on the existing debt after that, he said.
The new financing will probably consist of a first-lien loan and a second-lien piece, Murren said. Bank of America Corp. is the lead bank for the existing facility.
“We’re going to put together a capital structure that’s much more long term, and more in keeping with a project like that,” Murren said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. It “takes that uncertainty off the table and puts CityCenter in a very solid capital structure going forward.” Parts of the interview will be broadcast tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m. in New York on “Inside Track” with Deirdre Bolton.
MGM Debt
MGM Resorts this month raised $511 million by selling equity and issued $500 million bonds to repay some of its almost $13 billion in debt. Investors are betting on a Las Vegas recovery after Strip gambling revenue jumped 21 percent in August.
The Las Vegas-based company will use the proceeds and some cash to repay $1.2 billion to banks “as early as next week,” Murren said. MGM Resorts has extended the rest of the senior credit facility, $3.6 billion, to 2014 from its original October 2011 maturity.
MGM Resorts addressed solvency concerns in May 2009 after refinancing debt when it sold more than $1 billion in common stock and $1.5 billion in senior secured notes as part of a recapitalization. The company has subsequently tapped capital markets when investor demand for junk debt and casino stocks has rallied, including a $1 billion convertible note sale in April.
Showing posts with label Dubai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dubai. Show all posts
Friday, October 29, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Las Vegas Faces Its Deepest Slide Since the 1940s
Las Vegas Faces Its Deepest Slide Since the 1940s
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: October 2, 2010
LAS VEGAS — There are many cities across the country that are beginning to see the first glimpses of the end of the recession.
This is not one of them.
The nation’s gambling capital is staggering under a confluence of economic forces that has sent Las Vegas into what officials describe as its deepest economic rut since casinos first began rising in the desert here in the 1940s.
Even as city leaders remain hopeful that gambling revenues will rebound with the nation’s economy, experts project that it will not be enough to make up for an even deeper realignment that has taken place in the course of this recession: the collapse of the construction industry, which was the other economic pillar of the city and the state.
Unemployment in Nevada is now 14.4 percent, the highest in the nation and a stark contrast to the 3.8 percent unemployment rate here just 10 years ago; in Las Vegas, it is 14.7 percent.
August was the 44th consecutive month in which Nevada led the nation in housing foreclosures.
The Plaza Hotel and Casino, which is downtown, recently announced that it was laying off 400 workers and closing its hotel and parts of its casino for eventual renovation, the latest high-profile hit to a city that has seen a steady parade of them.
“It’s been in bad shape before, but not this bad,” said David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “If you look at the gaming revenues, they have declined and continue to decline over the past three years. “
“Sept. 11 set off a two-year slowdown,” Mr. Schwartz said. “But nothing of this magnitude.”
Mayor Oscar B. Goodman said in a recent interview that he was “very bullish on our future,” offering as evidence the packed airplanes he encountered both ways on a recent trip east to appear on “The Colbert Report.”
But, he added: “Our daily room rate average is not what it was. Our hotel room rates are bargains now. People aren’t spending on gambling as they have in the past. Ordinarily Las Vegas was the last to go into a recession and the first to come out. This one is different. As soon as they feel secure in their financial position, then Las Vegas will come back stronger than ever.”
The drop in the city’s gambling revenues, at first glance, tracks historical trends: Americans cut back on recreational travel and gambling during a recession. There are some signs that gambling revenues, which are down to 2004 levels, have at least stabilized. After months of precipitous decline, revenues increased 3 percent in the first quarter of 2010, but then dropped 5 percent in the second quarter, according to the Center for Gaming Research.
“I think we are bumping along the bottom,” said Stephen P. A. Brown, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which has been tracking the downturn. “Expectations are that once the U.S. economy turns around, the gaming industry will begin to improve.”
What is worrisome now is the nature of this economic downturn, when many people saw the value of their retirement funds or homes collapse. Economists say people are less likely to gamble as freely as they have in the past, particularly baby boomers, who may now be rattled about their retirement years. In one sign of this, while there were more people coming to Las Vegas in recent months, gambling receipts have remained stagnant.
“The big players, the ones who gamble the big money, I’m not sure they have it anymore,” Mr. Goodman said.
Gambling by Nevadans — itself a steady and critical stream of revenue — has also fallen off as a result of high unemployment, and analysts see no obvious way to turn that around anytime soon.
“Although gaming dropped with this economy, don’t automatically assume that when the economy comes back people will start gaming at the same level,” said Keith Foley, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service who tracks the industry. “We put this in the grand scheme of things. This is a highly discretionary form of spending. People lost their savings.”
And in the midst of all of this, standing as a prime symbol of Las Vegas’s taste for extravagant risk — or perhaps of a fateful misreading of a changing landscape — is a huge new “urban community” called CityCenter, which opened next to the Bellagio on the Strip.
Built by MGM Resorts and the government of Dubai, CityCenter is the largest privately financed construction project in United States history. It is an $8.5 billion labyrinth of hotels, casinos, retail malls, meeting rooms, auditoriums and spas spread across 76 acres with 16 million square feet of floor space. Steel and glass, a crush of buildings often rising at discordant angles, it is an arresting display of a new style of architecture and urban planning that has not been seen in Las Vegas before.
CityCenter was conceived before the economic downturn and did not open until last December, an unfortunate turn of timing that dropped 5,000 new hotel rooms into the city when some of the older properties had been struggling to bring people in. Another 2,500 rooms are due to be added when another new hotel and casino on the Strip, the Cosmopolitan, opens in mid-December. (A recent check online found rooms being offered for as little as $38 a night at the Sahara Hotel and Casino.)
At the same time, officials here are watching another potentially disruptive storm on the horizon: legislation in Congress that would legalize Internet gambling. Mr. Brown said he was hopeful that online gambling would not draw people away from Las Vegas because “Internet gambling appeals more to addicted gamblers than people who are seeking a casino experience.”
But Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader who is in the middle of a bruising re-election fight, said he would oppose such a move because it would hurt the state’s tourism industry and cost jobs.
And Billy Vassiliadis, the chief executive of the advertising agency that represents the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said, “People are looking at mall visits and online shopping and saying, ‘Yeah, that could be a problem.’ ”
“Am I worried?” Mr. Vassiliadis continued. “Hey, listen, I wish we could go all the way back to before Atlantic City opened. By my nature, I like monopolies as long as they are my clients.”
The potential challenge from the Internet is a reminder of just how much the playing field has changed for Las Vegas over the past generation: with states sponsoring weekly lotteries and legalized gambling permitted in many cities and Indian reservations.
In what may be no better sign of this city’s concern, Mr. Vassiliadis said officials were thinking of tweaking its iconic advertising slogan “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” to better appeal to a country that may not be in a big-spending, “let’s party” state of mind.
The downturn in gambling is just one big part of the economic malaise. Nevada is paying a price for an exuberant and often speculative run of commercial and residential construction that has left the market glutted. As a result, the confidence that the return of tourists alone would spur the city to rebound automatically after this recession — the way it did after, say, the recessions of 1982 and 1992 — is absent.
“There was a time 25 years ago that if tourism rebounded, the state rebounded,” Mr. Vassiliadis said. “That isn’t the case anymore. The other side of the economy here is going to be harder. There needs to be some real, thoughtful, deliberate effort to rebuild an economy here. It isn’t going to happen by itself.”
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: October 2, 2010
LAS VEGAS — There are many cities across the country that are beginning to see the first glimpses of the end of the recession.
This is not one of them.
The nation’s gambling capital is staggering under a confluence of economic forces that has sent Las Vegas into what officials describe as its deepest economic rut since casinos first began rising in the desert here in the 1940s.
Even as city leaders remain hopeful that gambling revenues will rebound with the nation’s economy, experts project that it will not be enough to make up for an even deeper realignment that has taken place in the course of this recession: the collapse of the construction industry, which was the other economic pillar of the city and the state.
Unemployment in Nevada is now 14.4 percent, the highest in the nation and a stark contrast to the 3.8 percent unemployment rate here just 10 years ago; in Las Vegas, it is 14.7 percent.
August was the 44th consecutive month in which Nevada led the nation in housing foreclosures.
The Plaza Hotel and Casino, which is downtown, recently announced that it was laying off 400 workers and closing its hotel and parts of its casino for eventual renovation, the latest high-profile hit to a city that has seen a steady parade of them.
“It’s been in bad shape before, but not this bad,” said David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “If you look at the gaming revenues, they have declined and continue to decline over the past three years. “
“Sept. 11 set off a two-year slowdown,” Mr. Schwartz said. “But nothing of this magnitude.”
Mayor Oscar B. Goodman said in a recent interview that he was “very bullish on our future,” offering as evidence the packed airplanes he encountered both ways on a recent trip east to appear on “The Colbert Report.”
But, he added: “Our daily room rate average is not what it was. Our hotel room rates are bargains now. People aren’t spending on gambling as they have in the past. Ordinarily Las Vegas was the last to go into a recession and the first to come out. This one is different. As soon as they feel secure in their financial position, then Las Vegas will come back stronger than ever.”
The drop in the city’s gambling revenues, at first glance, tracks historical trends: Americans cut back on recreational travel and gambling during a recession. There are some signs that gambling revenues, which are down to 2004 levels, have at least stabilized. After months of precipitous decline, revenues increased 3 percent in the first quarter of 2010, but then dropped 5 percent in the second quarter, according to the Center for Gaming Research.
“I think we are bumping along the bottom,” said Stephen P. A. Brown, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which has been tracking the downturn. “Expectations are that once the U.S. economy turns around, the gaming industry will begin to improve.”
What is worrisome now is the nature of this economic downturn, when many people saw the value of their retirement funds or homes collapse. Economists say people are less likely to gamble as freely as they have in the past, particularly baby boomers, who may now be rattled about their retirement years. In one sign of this, while there were more people coming to Las Vegas in recent months, gambling receipts have remained stagnant.
“The big players, the ones who gamble the big money, I’m not sure they have it anymore,” Mr. Goodman said.
Gambling by Nevadans — itself a steady and critical stream of revenue — has also fallen off as a result of high unemployment, and analysts see no obvious way to turn that around anytime soon.
“Although gaming dropped with this economy, don’t automatically assume that when the economy comes back people will start gaming at the same level,” said Keith Foley, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service who tracks the industry. “We put this in the grand scheme of things. This is a highly discretionary form of spending. People lost their savings.”
And in the midst of all of this, standing as a prime symbol of Las Vegas’s taste for extravagant risk — or perhaps of a fateful misreading of a changing landscape — is a huge new “urban community” called CityCenter, which opened next to the Bellagio on the Strip.
Built by MGM Resorts and the government of Dubai, CityCenter is the largest privately financed construction project in United States history. It is an $8.5 billion labyrinth of hotels, casinos, retail malls, meeting rooms, auditoriums and spas spread across 76 acres with 16 million square feet of floor space. Steel and glass, a crush of buildings often rising at discordant angles, it is an arresting display of a new style of architecture and urban planning that has not been seen in Las Vegas before.
CityCenter was conceived before the economic downturn and did not open until last December, an unfortunate turn of timing that dropped 5,000 new hotel rooms into the city when some of the older properties had been struggling to bring people in. Another 2,500 rooms are due to be added when another new hotel and casino on the Strip, the Cosmopolitan, opens in mid-December. (A recent check online found rooms being offered for as little as $38 a night at the Sahara Hotel and Casino.)
At the same time, officials here are watching another potentially disruptive storm on the horizon: legislation in Congress that would legalize Internet gambling. Mr. Brown said he was hopeful that online gambling would not draw people away from Las Vegas because “Internet gambling appeals more to addicted gamblers than people who are seeking a casino experience.”
But Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader who is in the middle of a bruising re-election fight, said he would oppose such a move because it would hurt the state’s tourism industry and cost jobs.
And Billy Vassiliadis, the chief executive of the advertising agency that represents the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said, “People are looking at mall visits and online shopping and saying, ‘Yeah, that could be a problem.’ ”
“Am I worried?” Mr. Vassiliadis continued. “Hey, listen, I wish we could go all the way back to before Atlantic City opened. By my nature, I like monopolies as long as they are my clients.”
The potential challenge from the Internet is a reminder of just how much the playing field has changed for Las Vegas over the past generation: with states sponsoring weekly lotteries and legalized gambling permitted in many cities and Indian reservations.
In what may be no better sign of this city’s concern, Mr. Vassiliadis said officials were thinking of tweaking its iconic advertising slogan “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” to better appeal to a country that may not be in a big-spending, “let’s party” state of mind.
The downturn in gambling is just one big part of the economic malaise. Nevada is paying a price for an exuberant and often speculative run of commercial and residential construction that has left the market glutted. As a result, the confidence that the return of tourists alone would spur the city to rebound automatically after this recession — the way it did after, say, the recessions of 1982 and 1992 — is absent.
“There was a time 25 years ago that if tourism rebounded, the state rebounded,” Mr. Vassiliadis said. “That isn’t the case anymore. The other side of the economy here is going to be harder. There needs to be some real, thoughtful, deliberate effort to rebuild an economy here. It isn’t going to happen by itself.”
Saturday, March 20, 2010
MGM Mirage and Dubai
MGM Mirage announces successful amendment and extension transaction
MGM Mirage announced that lenders representing approximately $4.37 billion of the outstanding commitments under its $5.55 billion senior bank credit facility have entered into an amendment agreement which, subject to certain conditions, will extend the maturity of a portion of the credit facility from October 3, 2011 to February 21, 2014.
Bank of America, N.A. is the administrative agent for the Restated Loan Agreement. The joint lead arrangers for the Restated Loan Agreement are Banc of America Securities LLC, RBS Securities, Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas Securities Corp., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citibank North America, Inc., Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Bank of Scotland Plc, Commerzbank, Wachovia Bank, National Association, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. and UBS Securities LLC.
MGM MIRAGE, one of the world's leading and most respected companies with significant holdings in gaming, hospitality and entertainment, owns and operates 15 properties located in Nevada, Mississippi and Michigan, and has 50% investments in five other properties in Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois and Macau. One of those investments - CityCenter - is also managed by MGM MIRAGE. CityCenter, an unprecedented urban metropolis on the Las Vegas Strip with Gold and Silver LEED certifications, is a joint venture between MGM MIRAGE and Infinity World Development Corp, a subsidiary of Dubai World. CityCenter features ARIA Resort & Casino, Vdara Hotel & Spa, Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas; Veer Towers, and Crystals retail and entertainment district. MGM MIRAGE Hospitality has entered into management agreements for casino and non-casino resorts throughout the world.
MGM Mirage announced that lenders representing approximately $4.37 billion of the outstanding commitments under its $5.55 billion senior bank credit facility have entered into an amendment agreement which, subject to certain conditions, will extend the maturity of a portion of the credit facility from October 3, 2011 to February 21, 2014.
Bank of America, N.A. is the administrative agent for the Restated Loan Agreement. The joint lead arrangers for the Restated Loan Agreement are Banc of America Securities LLC, RBS Securities, Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas Securities Corp., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citibank North America, Inc., Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Bank of Scotland Plc, Commerzbank, Wachovia Bank, National Association, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. and UBS Securities LLC.
MGM MIRAGE, one of the world's leading and most respected companies with significant holdings in gaming, hospitality and entertainment, owns and operates 15 properties located in Nevada, Mississippi and Michigan, and has 50% investments in five other properties in Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois and Macau. One of those investments - CityCenter - is also managed by MGM MIRAGE. CityCenter, an unprecedented urban metropolis on the Las Vegas Strip with Gold and Silver LEED certifications, is a joint venture between MGM MIRAGE and Infinity World Development Corp, a subsidiary of Dubai World. CityCenter features ARIA Resort & Casino, Vdara Hotel & Spa, Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas; Veer Towers, and Crystals retail and entertainment district. MGM MIRAGE Hospitality has entered into management agreements for casino and non-casino resorts throughout the world.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Dubai to hold Las Vegas CityCenter
It seems appropriate that a country that built itself based on casino capitalism, should hold on to it Las Vegas Casino as it implodes -- [LINK]
Moody’s cut the ratings of six government-linked companies, leaving all in junk status. Emaar was among the companies downgraded.
The conglomerate and the emirate had relied on cheap cash to build up Dubai over the past decade. But the bills are coming due and the money is not there.
That crunch prompted Dubai’s government, on the eve of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, to announce that Dubai World would seek a six-month "standstill," effectively a delay, on repaying some of its $60 billion in debts.
The company later said the restructuring would involve roughly $26 billion in debts, and indicated it may sell some assets to raise the cash. But it said its profitable ports and related free zone operations would be exempt from the restructuring. Also off the table was its private equity division Istithmar World and Infinity World Holding, the co-owner of Las Vegas’ new $8.5 billion CityCenter hotel and casino complex.
Yet even as it tries to fence off more valuable assets, Dubai is coming under mounting pressure from creditors. Dubai World’s Istithmar lost ownership of the W Union Square New York hotel in a foreclosure auction Tuesday.
Moody’s cut the ratings of six government-linked companies, leaving all in junk status. Emaar was among the companies downgraded.
The conglomerate and the emirate had relied on cheap cash to build up Dubai over the past decade. But the bills are coming due and the money is not there.
That crunch prompted Dubai’s government, on the eve of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, to announce that Dubai World would seek a six-month "standstill," effectively a delay, on repaying some of its $60 billion in debts.
The company later said the restructuring would involve roughly $26 billion in debts, and indicated it may sell some assets to raise the cash. But it said its profitable ports and related free zone operations would be exempt from the restructuring. Also off the table was its private equity division Istithmar World and Infinity World Holding, the co-owner of Las Vegas’ new $8.5 billion CityCenter hotel and casino complex.
Yet even as it tries to fence off more valuable assets, Dubai is coming under mounting pressure from creditors. Dubai World’s Istithmar lost ownership of the W Union Square New York hotel in a foreclosure auction Tuesday.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Big Default!
This bears watching.
Dubai's problems rattle markets
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Just a year after the global downturn derailed Dubai's explosive growth, the city is now so swamped in debt that it's asking for a six-month reprieve on paying its bills — causing a drop on world markets yesterday and raising questions about Dubai's reputation as a magnet for international investment.
The fallout came swiftly and was felt globally after Wednesday's statement that Dubai's main development engine, Dubai World, would ask creditors for a "standstill" on paying back its $60 billion debt until at least May. The company's real estate arm, Nakheel — whose projects include the palm-shaped island in the Gulf — shoulders the bulk of money due to banks, investment houses and outside development contractors.
In total, the state-backed networks nicknamed Dubai Inc. are $80 billion in the red and the emirate needed a bailout earlier this year from its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Markets took the news badly — with the Dubai woes and the continued fall of the U.S. dollar giving investors twin worries. Dubai's move raised concerns about debt across the Gulf Region. Prices to insure debt from Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain all rose by double-digit percentages Thursday, according to data from CMA DataVision.
In Europe, the FTSE 100, Germany's DAX and the CAC-40 in France opened sharply lower. Earlier in Asia, the Shanghai index sank 119.19 points, or 3.6 percent, in the biggest one-day fall since Aug. 31. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 1.8 percent to 22,210.41.
Wall Street was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday and most markets in the Middle East were silent because of a major Islamic feast.
"Dubai's standstill announcement ... was vague and it remains difficult to discern whether the call for a standstill will be voluntary," said a statement from the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based research group that assesses political and financial risk for foreign investors interested in Dubai.
"If it is not, Dubai World will be going into default and that will have more serious negative repercussions for Dubai's sovereign debt, Dubai World and market confidence in the UAE in general," the statement added.
Dubai became the Gulf's biggest credit crunch victim a year ago. But its ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, had continually dismissed concerns over the city-state's liquidity and claims it overreached during the good times.
When asked about the debt, he confidently assured reporters in a rare meeting two months ago that "we are all right" and "we are not worried."
Dubai's problems rattle markets
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Just a year after the global downturn derailed Dubai's explosive growth, the city is now so swamped in debt that it's asking for a six-month reprieve on paying its bills — causing a drop on world markets yesterday and raising questions about Dubai's reputation as a magnet for international investment.
The fallout came swiftly and was felt globally after Wednesday's statement that Dubai's main development engine, Dubai World, would ask creditors for a "standstill" on paying back its $60 billion debt until at least May. The company's real estate arm, Nakheel — whose projects include the palm-shaped island in the Gulf — shoulders the bulk of money due to banks, investment houses and outside development contractors.
In total, the state-backed networks nicknamed Dubai Inc. are $80 billion in the red and the emirate needed a bailout earlier this year from its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Markets took the news badly — with the Dubai woes and the continued fall of the U.S. dollar giving investors twin worries. Dubai's move raised concerns about debt across the Gulf Region. Prices to insure debt from Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain all rose by double-digit percentages Thursday, according to data from CMA DataVision.
In Europe, the FTSE 100, Germany's DAX and the CAC-40 in France opened sharply lower. Earlier in Asia, the Shanghai index sank 119.19 points, or 3.6 percent, in the biggest one-day fall since Aug. 31. Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 1.8 percent to 22,210.41.
Wall Street was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday and most markets in the Middle East were silent because of a major Islamic feast.
"Dubai's standstill announcement ... was vague and it remains difficult to discern whether the call for a standstill will be voluntary," said a statement from the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based research group that assesses political and financial risk for foreign investors interested in Dubai.
"If it is not, Dubai World will be going into default and that will have more serious negative repercussions for Dubai's sovereign debt, Dubai World and market confidence in the UAE in general," the statement added.
Dubai became the Gulf's biggest credit crunch victim a year ago. But its ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, had continually dismissed concerns over the city-state's liquidity and claims it overreached during the good times.
When asked about the debt, he confidently assured reporters in a rare meeting two months ago that "we are all right" and "we are not worried."
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