Nakheel's Chris O'Donnell quits as CEO

Long-term planning became 'very difficult' for the developer, O'Donnell said last year.

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Chris O’Donnell has resigned as CEO of Nakheel after five years at the helm.

Sanjay Manchanda, current chief finance officer, will replace O’Donnell as acting CEO until further notice.

The former Lend Lease and Leighton executive has come to the end of his contract with the troubled developer. He helped  drive the property company’s mega developments in Dubai that include the palm-shaped islands off its coast, as part of the wider boom in the emirate’s economy over the last decade.

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"Chris has decided to leave Nakheel following five years spent with the company,” the company stated. “Mr Manchanda is currently the chief finance officer of the company. The board of directors of Nakheel wish Mr. O’Donnell all the best in his new endeavours.”

The sharp falls in the emirate’s property market over the last 18 months saw O’Donnell and Nakheel, part of Dubai World, restructure its debts to creditors and deliver payments to contractors that aided the building boom, including Arabtec, the UAE’s biggest construction firm.

Last year saw then company also restart a clutch of projects throughout the city.

“The market impact on Nakheel was significant,” O’Donnell told Arabian Business, CW’s sister title for business and financial affairs.

“We had a significant reduction in collections [and] increased customer defaults… There was a lack of credit, there was land values reducing for developers [and] there was oversupply coming… This environment made long-term planning very difficult.”

With more than 30 years in the property sector, O’Donnell joined Nakheel in 2006 after spending five years as managing director of the Investa Property Group in Australia, in which time the company increased its funds under management almost eight fold.