جريدة فاينانشل تايمز : جزء من مصاريف محمد بن راشد المكتوم ذهبت لشراء خيول وجحشات في عدة دول في العالم
اين ذهبت المليارات التي اقترضها محمد بن راشد المكتوم من البنوك العالمية ؟ هل ذهبت فعلا كلها لبناء عمارات وفنادق وابراج ومحلات تعريص ؟ هذا السؤال طرجته اليوم جريدة الفاينانشل تايمز الانجليزية التي اشارت الى ان الشيخ انفق الملايين على الخيول والجحشات والاسطبلات في مختلف دول العالم
By Roger Blitz in London
Published: December 4 2009 17:31 | Last updated: December 4 2009 17:31
Sheikh Mohammed (centre) celebrates with his wife, Princess Haya of Jordan, after winning the Epsom Derby in Britain last year
Kirsten Rausing, the Swedish Tetra Pak heiress, was taken aback at the buying inactivity of John Ferguson, the bloodstock adviser to Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, at this week’s Tattersalls mare sales at Newmarket.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
In depth: Dubai debt crisis - Dec-04
Dubai World bondholders step up pressure - Dec-04
High price sinks Hochtief unit IPO - Dec-04
“It was the first time that anybody can remember that we didn’t see him buy anything,” said Ms Rausing, one of the leading breeders in the UK.
There is acute nervousness in racing at events in Dubai and whether they will force Sheikh Mohammed, the sport’s biggest benefactor, to curb his spending.
But Mr Ferguson, who was similarly not tempted at last month’s prestigious Keeneland sales in Lexington, Kentucky, says any suggestion that such parsimony might be linked to the Dubai debt crisis is false.
“The restructuring of Dubai World has nothing to do with Sheikh Mohammed’s thoroughbred racing interests, as they are private,” says Mr Ferguson. In other words, it will take a lot more than a $26bn (€17.5bn, £15.7bn) debt restructuring problem to get between Skeikh Mohammed and the indulgence of his passion for horses.
For good measure, two days after Dubai World asked for a standstill agreement on its debt, Mr Ferguson spent $1.95m of Sheikh Mohammed’s money buying eight foals at Tattersalls’ sales.
Such signs are reassuring to the racing and bloodstock industries, which view the potential knock-on effect of the Dubai crisis with a mixture of alarm and realism.
Alarm, because so many in the industry owe their livelihoods to Sheikh Mohammed; realism, because the industry has long suspected such largesse could not continue interminably.
It is difficult to overestimate the scale of Sheikh Mohammed’s investment in racing over more than three decades. Darley, his breeding business, owns more than 50,000 acres of land, spread over England, Ireland, the US, Australia and Japan.
His stud operations comprise 55 stallions and more than 800 mares and earn $150m a year in fees.
Godolphin, his Dubai-based racing operation, situated 10 minutes from his office, has over the course of its 17-year existence trained nearly 1,500 horses, accumulating more than $20m in prize money. Training fees in UK are estimated to cost about £4m a year.
Between them, Darley and Godolphin employ more than 2,500 people, the accommodation costs of many of them paid by Sheikh Mohammed to ensure that they live close to the stud operations.
Throw in the millions he has invested in racing welfare, sponsorship and propping up coverage of racing in the UK on free-to-air television, plus the racing interests of other Maktoum family members, and it is clear why Ms Rausing says that when it comes to Sheikh Mohammed and racing, “there is no bottom line”.
Paul Roy, the chairman of the British Horseracing Authority, says people in the industry will ask about whether that level of support will continue.
“It has been a massive investment across breeding, training and sponsorship, and one which obviously has a multiplier effect through the industry,” says Mr Roy. Mr Ferguson concurs. Asked if bloodstock and racing has a future without Sheikh Mohammed’s millions, he prefers to focus on what his boss has achieved thus far.
“If it wasn’t for the Maktoum family and their generosity and passion, I honestly believe that the thoroughbred business in the UK would be like Italy or Germany, which are minuscule,” he says.
“There simply hasn’t been individuals in this country investing in bloodstock.”
There are those, however, who believe that as a buyer of racehorses, Sheikh Mohammed’s obsession with accumulating the best at any price has created an unsustainable market, even if it has helped out some hard-pressed owners.
Some of those purchases are from Darley stallions to help Sheikh Mohammed’s breeders, which one racehorse owner described as “a Maktoum form of quantitative easing”.
Bill Oppenheim, a commentator for the US-based Thoroughbred Daily News, predicts top prices would drop by 50 per cent without the Maktoums. Nonetheless, after a catastrophic 2008 for bloodstock sales, the most recent sales at Kentucky and Newmarket provide evidence of resilience in the market, even when Sheikh Mohammed keeps his hands in his pockets.
“The market would operate at levels that people are interested in,” says Mr Oppenheim. “Would the industry be better off? It would be a whole lot different.” For Sheikh Mohammed, it is business as usual. There has been no let-up in recent years in his investments. This year, he has bought $100m worth of yearlings, horses aged between one and two years.
Next month sees the opening of the £1.5bn Meydan racecourse in Dubai, which will stage the world’s richest race, the $10m Dubai World Cup in March.
But Sheikh Mohammed is 60 and, even if he rides out the debt storm, people in racing suspect the Maktoum generations coming after him are less interested in the equine world.
One senior British racing executive who asked not to be named does not dare contemplate a racing world without the Maktoums.
“Their investment in British racing has been absolutely massive,” he says. “Without that investment, God knows where we would be.”