Real Estate project will house stock exchange. GFH also announced the start of the $600 million Areen Desert Spa Resort
The Gulf Finance House (GFH) in Bahrain said Tuesday that investors had subscribed to 85 percent of the proposal for the first stage of the Bahrain Financial Harbor, a $1 billion real estate project.
“The proposal for the first stage of the Bahrain Financial Harbor has been snatched up by investors and it will be officially closed at the end of this month,” said Fouad Abdullah Omar, chairman of GFH, at a news conference held at the Gulf Investors Forum in Beirut. He did not specify the subscribed amount.
The Bahrain-based bank has teamed up with the government of Bahrain to build the 380,000 square-meter Bahrain Financial Harbor, a real estate project that comprises two 50-story towers, a financial mall that will house the Bahrain stock exchange and a “harbor house,” which will provide commercial office space.
In their news conference, GFH also announced the official start of the Areen Desert Spa Resort in Bahrain, a $600 million project that envisages the creation of a spa resort, aqua park, residential village and resort hotels. The resort will be laid out over a 21 million square-meter area and should be completed by 2007.
Chief executive officer of GFH Essam Janahi said that eight contracting companies had put in bids to build the first stage of the Bahrain Financial Harbor. He added that three companies had been short-listed: Bouygues Batiment International of France, As-Seif Engineering Contracting from Saudi Arabia and Al-Hamad Contracting from the United Arab Emirates.
“In February we will grant the tender to one of the three contractors to start implementing the first phase of the project, which will begin in April,” Janahi said. GFH announced in December 2003 that the Kuwait Investment Company had entered as a strategic partner in the Bahrain Financial Harbor project by contributing $35 million to the special offering for the first phase.
GFH was set up in 1999 as an Islamic investment bank and it has expanded to finance a number of technology, real estate and industrial projects in Bahrain. It recently helped to set up the Arab Finance House in Beirut, a Lebanese-Gulf Islamic bank.
GFH also recently increased its paid-up capital money acquired by issuing shares and other revenues and not through borrowings or retained earnings from $75 million to $135 million, thereby increasing the bank’s net worth to some $200 million.
“We plan to list our shares on the Bahrain and the Kuwait Stock Exchanges in the near future,” Omar said.
At the end of September 2003, GFH had $183 million in assets, $82 million in liabilities and a $11.5 million in revenues.
Dania Saadi
© The Daily Star 2004
