Dubai's Nakheel to cut 500 jobs

Nakheel, the state-owned property giant behind the Palm Jumeirah scheme, has revealed it is to make 500 redundancies.

The developer said the “current easing market conditions” in the Gulf require it to cut its workforce 15%. Nakheel also said that it will scale back work on “some of its projects”, although it did not detail which ones.

Nakheel follows in the footsteps of Dubai developers such as Emaar, Damac Properties and Omniyaat, all of which have announced plans to cut jobs in recent weeks.

Property prices in Dubai have plummeted since the summer, and the emirate's largest developers have said they will slow down their future projects to ease overcrowding in the market.

Nakheel has a number of large schemes in development, including the 1km-high Nakheel Tower development, and The World, a set of private offshore islands designed to resemble a map of the world.

The job cuts come just two weeks after the firm funded half of the £20m opening celebrations for the Atlantis hotel on the Palm Jumeirah.