Foreign media should look at the Dubai World issue as an ordinary commercial entity restructuring, which is no longer uncommon in today's economic landscape, a senior banker and top publishing official said.

Ahmed Al Shaikh, Vice-Chairman, Emirates Islamic Bank, Managing Director of Modern Printing Press, and Chairman of the DCCI Printing and Publishing Group, said filing for bankruptcy or restructuring is a natural recourse for any business in the world, and any move to adopt the mechanisms in this part of the world should not be seen as something extraordinary.

"I resent what has been said in the media," Al Shaikh told Emirates Business. "The bankers who have given the loans to the companies based their decisions on companies' balance sheets and on their forecast, so it was a commercial loan for a commercial entity and it was given for a commercial reason."

"Like any project, if a commercial project has failed you have to look for a legal action against this company – either liquidate or restructure it. How many restructurings do you read about in newspapers around the world? About $180 billion (Dh660.96bn) was pumped in by the [US] government into AIG. So why did people not make a fuss about it" he said.

Al Shaikh said the government should not necessarily pump in money to salvage companies because of the underlying societal difference of the Gulf and the UAE in particular. "The difference is quite clear – there is taxation there, here there is no taxation. There is high unemployment there and here we have low unemployment. So there is difference of societies and systems, so you cannot compare them," he said.

Al Shaikh, who is also the Chairman of Ducab, said real players are optimistic despite the recessionary effects.

He said Ducab, which is owned equally by the governments of Dubai and Abu Dubai, has benefited by the trickle-down effects of the Dubai World story. "We have increased the percentage of our market share because a lot of people did not feel it is safe to do business," he said, indicating that in times of a slump people flocked to the strongest player.

Ducab's revenues fell by 28 per cent from Dh3.35bn in 2008 to Dh2.4bn but that is mainly due to the steep decline in base copper price from $8,300 per tonne in 2008 to $2,800 in 2009.

"More than 90 per cent of business cost come from copper so naturally revenue has dropped," Al Shaikh said, noting that the company was still able to make profits.

"Have you seen any pessimistic person who's working in real business even during 2009 in the UAE" he said. "I guess those who have been pessimistic have been running on huge capacity without utilisation or huge leverage. But we are a company that has been working in good capacity with enough leverage. We have been optimistic since 2008 and we have achieved our goal for 2009. Yes, there was a deviation but at the end of the day we were not in losses."

This year, he said, will remain a "hard year" but there is more clarity on where the economy is heading.