Dubai Buys 20% Stake of Nasdaq; Abu Dhabi Takes Part of Carlyle Group
September 21st, 2007Via: International Herald Tribune:
While American and European companies have been shelving acquisitions after jitters in the credit market dried up potential financing, oil-producing countries in the Middle East showed Thursday that they do not share the same limitations.
In a series of multibillion-dollar deals, Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi reached out to acquire significant stakes in three stock markets and a U.S. private equity firm, illustrating their increasing appetite for investing the growing wealth from record oil prices in high-quality assets abroad.
But one of the deals could run into political resistance in the United States – as happened last year when DP World of Dubai was pressured to sell the U.S. port operations it had acquired as part of a larger deal.
On Thursday, Dubai – the fastest-growing financial center in the Gulf – agreed to take a stake in the Nasdaq Stock Market, which is based in New York. It would become the first government-controlled stock exchange to hold a significant stake in an American rival, prompting calls in Washington for a national security review of the Nasdaq deal.
Separately, Qatar, which competes with Dubai as a financial center in the region, bought 20 percent of London Stock Exchange and 9.98 percent of OMX, the stock market operator based in Stockholm. And finally, the government of Abu Dhabi agreed to buy a 7.5 percent stake in Carlyle Group, a U.S. buyout firm, for $1.35 billion.
The puzzle parts are slowly taking their respective place.