DURRAT AL BAHRAIN AND AL TIJARIA FORM JOINT VENTURE TO DEVELOP TWO DURRAT VILLA ISLANDS

Durrat Al Bahrain, the Kingdom’s largest planned luxury residential, commercial and tourist resort development, announced today that it has signed a MOU to establish a joint venture with The Commercial Real Estate Co (Al-Tijaria) and its associates to develop two of its residential Islands.
The new joint venture, the Durrat Tijaria Company, will lead and manage the development of the two remaining outer islands (Atoll 5 & 6) of the $6 billion seaside city resort.  In total, Durrat Al Bahrain offers 11 residential islands in the shapes of petals and atolls, all of which are dedicated to tranquil, island style living.
Six of Durrat Al Bahrain’s residential islands have already been developed, consisting of three inner islands and three outer islands of just over 1000 luxury beach and sea front villas.  These islands were included in the first and second phases of the project and home owners will be taking delivery of their new homes for both phases from November this year.
Commenting on the new joint venture, Jassim Al Jowder, CEO of Durrat Al Bahrain, said, “This is an extremely significant agreement as it means that additional value will be released to our shareholders and that we now have a new and valued partner to work alongside us in creating Durrat Al Bahrain.  It’s fantastic news that we’ll be able to work with a company such as Al Tijaria which has more than 35 years experience in developing real estate.  We’ll be working together over the next few years to bring out talents together to create some very exciting and unique residential villas for these islands.  We’re also happy to be partnering with a Kuwaiti company, to complement our 50% shareholders, Kuwait Finance House.”
Mr Abdul-Fatah Marafie, Chairman and Managing Director, Al Tijaria Real Estate Co, added, “We are firm believers in the vision of Durrat Al Bahrain and we are excited at the prospect of working with the Durrat Al Bahrain team to create properties and communities that will offer the promise of Durrat Al Bahrain, island living, urban style.  We feel this is a unique proposition to home owners in the Gulf and we feel that we can bring our experience to the project to help make it an even better place to live and work for future generations.”
Durrat Al Bahrain will hold a 50% stake in the new joint venture, with Al Tijaria holding 30% and 10% being held both by the Kuwaiti Park Company and the Kuwaiti Commercial Malls Company.