ArabianBusiness.com

The chairman compared Jeddah Gate with the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower built by Emaar in Dubai. “The two projects both began in May 2005,” he said. “Burj Khalifa was opened, while Jeddah Gate is still under construction.”

The first residents have moved into the Armani Residences inside Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. Emaar Properties, the developer of the mixed-use tower, has handed over homes to buyers of the designer apartments and one of the new residents, Sarah Belhasa, has shown Arabian Business TV around her home.

Emaar Properties PJSC plans to sell as much as $2bn of Islamic bonds, its first in more than six years, as the developer of the world’s tallest tower in Dubai taps appetite for higher-yielding assets.

Armani-branded residences in the Burj Khalifa are comparatively holding their sale value, despite other apartments in the world’s tallest tower seeing price declines of more than 70 percent, real estate brokers have said. Average sale prices for the tower’s 144 luxury Armani Residences are valued at AED4-5,000 per square foot; at their minimum, almost double the AED2,800 per sq ft commanded by the remainder of the skyscraper’s 900 apartments, said Catherine Clarke, head of residential valuations at real estate consultancy firm Colliers International.

Emaar Properties is still finalising the rebranding process of the Burj Khalifa and will shortly announce whether there will be a new name for the Downtown Burj Dubai area, the developer told Arabian Business on Tuesday. “Sheikh Khalifa is one of the UAE’s symbols,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee and an uncle of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Giorgio explained the was surprised when Mohammed Alabbar asked him to do this hotel project in Dubai. “My thinking is less is more, and Dubai was being called the Las Vegas of the desert. I couldn’t understand why he wanted this hotel in Dubai.” Alabbar himself told me it took “two years” to persuade him to sign up!

Nominations for the prestigious Arabian Business Achievement Awards have opened, with the winners to be announced at a glittering ceremony on November 30th at Dubai’s Armani Hotel. This year’s awards will span 15 categories, including technology, media, retail and the sought after titles of Businessman and Businesswoman of the Year.

Organisers said on Tuesday that an exclusive preview of the new BlackBerry Pearl 9105 smartphone device in Dubai has been cancelled. Arabian Business can reveal that the preview party, which was due to be held at Prive at the Armani Hotel on Wednesday evening, has been postponed until a later date. The decision follows an announcement on Sunday by the UAE that it will ban certain BlackBerry services in the country from October 11.

The real estate market in Dubai may be still be in bumpy territory, but for the super-rich, the recession probably regarded as an unfortunate event that happened to someone else. Earlier this month, Arabian Business revealed that apartment sellers in the Burj Khalifa Armani Residences have listed a number of two-bedroom units with asking prices of AED30m ($8.1m) each.

Fino International managing partner Talal Saeed describes fitting out the Armani Hotel and the private offices of Emaar as "enlightening". Working on the interior fitout of the Burj Khalifa was both "enlightening" and "surprising," according to Talal Saeed, managing partner of Fino International. The four year old, Dubai-based interiors specialist was appointed to work on three separate areas of the world's tallest building.