James Wilson

'Nakheel has a very large real estate development portfolio, both on land and at sea,' he says.

'My first priority was to fully understand each project, and I have had the advantage of working for IFA in my previous capacity which is a large investor in The Palm, Jumeirah.

'But my main focus will be on the customer, and we will have a customer care centre open very soon. I think it is absolutely essential to build up a long-term relationship with customers, whether they are individuals buying one villa or major investors.'

Mr. Wilson arrives in the top job with a long track record of developing 20 resorts, latterly in the Middle East but before that Portugal and South Africa. His approach is that of a cool professional with attention to details such as delivery timing and product quality.

'We have sold a lot of projects and are now in the roll-out stage,' he notes. 'We have just opened the Ibn Battuta shopping mall, and have a duty of care to deliver to our customer.'

He realizes that time schedules have slipped on Nakheel projects and is coming up with a definitive schedule for all the projects 'within the next four weeks' so that clients know exactly where they stand.

'There will not be too many more project announcements from us for a while,' says Mr. Wilson. 'Property development is about relationship building and we need to get that right.'

Nonetheless, Nakheel is still pulling together the biggest property project in the history of Dubai, The Dubai Waterfront. This is a city for 500,000 residents bigger than Central London, to be built over 10 years around a new 75-kilometre long Arabian Canal.

'The Dubai Waterfront is a new land development company, and we are just in the process of finalizing the list of investors who will hold a 49% stake in the company. The idea is to include large regional players who bring expertise to the project.'

Does he really think there will be the demand for a development on this sort of scale?

'There is a huge demand for property here, and we will be switching our marketing focus to the end user, whether they are in Germany or the UK as well as the UAE.

'With the scale of projects like the Jebel Ali airport free zone and the development of Dubai as a hub for finance, tourism, IT, and many other sectors, we don't see any let up in demand.'

Of course, even Dubai is not going to roll-out a development of this size over night. The Waterfront is phased over 10 years, and the earliest phases do not involve land reclamation.

'We are building a new city, and a company to develop and manage a new city. It is all about having the right teams, excellent management and staff, and Nakheel already has many of the right people but I am recruiting more every day,' says Mr. Wilson.