Burj Dubai renamed Burj Khalifah 4, January 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in The Emirates.Tags: Abu Dhabi, Burj Dubai, Burj Khalifah, Burj Khalifah renamed, Dubai
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In a staggering sign of the times, the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world and the epitome of all that is Dubai, has been renamed the Burj Khalifah, after the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan. This comes after Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai from its largely self-induced financial meltdown towards the end of 2009 to the tune of at least $25bn.
The unanswerable question is, of course, just how grudging Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, was in changing the name of his premiere, world attention-gathering, pet project. Certainly, he would not have given up this huge honour lightly but given the scale of the help offered to Dubai by its sister Emirate, Al Maktoum must simply have been left with no choice. It was expected that Dubai’s flagship airline, Emirates, was going to be ‘creamed off’ by Abu Dhabi as part payment, but to my knowledge no-one predicted that the price would be quite this high.
The Gulf blog 
BK Tower the pride of Dubai
When I first heard, I thought it was some cruel joke! It has to hurt, and frankly it reeks of mean-spiritedness from Abu Dhabi!
Now I’m no fan of Sheikh Mo or any of his ultimately useless vanity projects, but imagine if General Motors had been renamed Obama Motors after he bailed them out!
But then I suppose he got Dubai into the mess it’s in so this is some kind of comeuppance
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