Sitting mostly empty, Burj Dubai has finally been launched perhaps in a most inopportune time as Dubai is mired in deep financial crisis, thus becoming a symbol of a decade of excess for Dubai as well as the rest of the world. Update Burj Dubai is now Burj Khalifa, after the ruler of Abu Dhabi. This [...]

Christian Lacroix, the highly imaginative coutour designer famous for his pouff skirt and over-the-top designs, has failed to find a buyer for his fashion house. Lacroix would have been a highly successful designer in the era of Marie Antoinette, but his designs seem ill fited for the modern era.  Is this the beginning of the end [...]

Comedians are already on to the Dubai case. One compares Dubai with a juvenile Monopoly player who buys up everything on the board and then goes bust. Abu Dhabi is the smug player who waits it out and then says: “Erm … I think I’ll have your hotels … and your planes.” It has long be [...]

Dubai World, the largest corporate entity of Dubai, is under a mountain of debt so heavy ($59 billion to be precise)  that it has announced a 6-month standstill on its loan payments and the appointment of Deloitte LLP to restructure the group.  Instead of ‘transformative, diverse, pioneering’, words that will now be forever associated with the [...]