Dubai-headquartered property developer Emaar announced on Thursday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Dubai branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and Dubai’s largest bank, Emirates NBD, to explore tripartite collaboration with an view to entering the Chinese real estate market.

The MoU was signed during a Belt & Road Bankers Roundtable hosted by ICBC in Beijing on Wednesday, the Dubai Financial Market-listed developer said in a press statement.

The statement said that the cooperation between the three entities would not be limited to financial services support with regard to Emaar’s development in China and other countries in the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, but would also include joint exploration of urban development and the creation of high-quality living communities in China.

“Emaar is currently engaging in discussions with many state-owned companies and evaluating projects in a number of provinces and cities, such as Hainan, Jiangsu, Chongqing, Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai,” the statement said.

“Emaar is very seriously eyeing entering into the real estate market of China and leveraging its long experience in building key projects and attractions,” it added.

The developer of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, has a land bank of 1.6 billion sq ft in the UAE and key international markets and has delivered more than 51,800 residential units in Dubai and other global markets since 2002, according to the press statement.

On Monday, Emaar said in a statement that its shareholders had approved a 15 fils per dirham dividend at its AGM after the company  increased net profit by 30 percent year-on-year in 2018 to 7.216 billion UAE dirhams ($1.9 billion), prior to considering the effect of the IPO [Initial Public Offering] of Emaar Development and forex movements. Revenue grew by 37 percent year-on-year to 25.7 billion dirhams ($6.995 billion).

(Writing by Anoop Menon; Editing by Michael Fahy)

(anoop.menon@refinitiv.com)

© ZAWYA 2019