Barwa Real Estate Group announced the completion of its transaction with Qatari Diar held on 6th June 2013 & 17 November 2013 and accordingly closing the agreement signed on 5 November 2013. The agreement included selling Barwa Real Estate Group shares in Barwa Bank, Barwa Commercial Avenue, Barwa Al Sadd & Barwa City, and some other assets.
As part of the transaction, Barwa Real Estate completed selling its shares in Barwa Bank which are 37.34% of the total shares of the Bank to Qatari Diar in a deal worth QR 7,626,206,274. Barwa Real Estate also sold its shares in Barwa Commercial Avenue which are 95% of the total shares to Lebreqa Real Estate (totally owned by Qatari Diar) on 14 July 2014 in a transaction worth QR 9,020,807,409 (final deal value is pending for completion). All those transactions were utilized to close Barwa debts. Qatar Exchange & Qatar Financial Centre were informed by those transactions on time. The profit (loss) resulted from those transactions were included in Barwa financial results as per the deals dates.
It is worth mentioning that on 5 November 2014, Barwa announced amending the agreement with Qatari Diar after Barwa took back its shares in Barwa Al Sadd project after studies confirmed the economic importance of retaining this project. As per the transaction, Qatar Diar, strategic partner of Barwa Real Estate, decided not to go further with the transfer of the rest of assets as the part which was already completed had significantly reduced Barwa debts.
The assets which were not transferred to Qatari Diar are some local & international assets from Barwa investment portfolio which are worth QR 1400 million as per the agreement. The completion of the transaction recorded some loss resulted by the low value of those assets and some costs associated with them, this is a total of QR 239 million of Barwa financial statement of the year ended 31 Dec 2014.
In the coming period, Barwa Real Estate Group will put an investment for those assets to increase its value in order to reflect on shareholders returns.
