Tiger Woods tries to repair damage to his marriage, and his golf brand

In a lakeside Florida mansion, marriage counsellors, lawyers and public relations advisers are engaged in a bizarre and expensive round of shuttle diplomacy between the world's richest athlete and his furious wife.

For Tiger Woods, a control freak accustomed to calling the shots both on the fairway and in his private life, the unravelling of an image as carefully manicured as a country club green is both agonising and self-inflicted.

The scandal of his philandering is so damaging to his "Mr Clean" brand that the publicity-averse superstar is even considering an invitation to appear on the sofa of talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

For that interview to work, quite possibly with Elin Nordegren, 29, the wife on whom he cheated, by his side, Woods, 33, would have to engage in the sort of public confessional that has previously been anathema to him.

His minders have not granted such access since a 1997 interview with the men's magazine GQ backfired badly when the young sportsman was quoted telling dirty and racial jokes.

That profile also hinted that when he was not playing the fairways, he was playing the field from what some in the sport call the real PGA - the "Party Groupie Association" (rather than the Professional Golfers' Association).



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Dubai is in a 'nasty mess of its own making' – but so are we

Dubai has already given the world some of its biggest buildings (see below) and biggest indoor ski slope, says Alistair Osborne in The Daily Telegraph. Now it has produced "the biggest debt-market cock-up".




Last Wednesday, the Emirate's government suddenly asked creditors of Dubai World, a large state-sponsored conglomerate with $60bn of obligations, to agree to a standstill on debt repayments until next June at the earliest. This included the $3.5bn Islamic bond issued by the group's Nakheel property subsidiary – the company behind the palm island land reclamation project – and due to be repaid in mid-December. Then it shut up shop for a four-day Islamic holiday.
Dubai shocks the markets

The announcement left investors feeling "wronged and wrong-footed", says The Economist. Only three weeks before the government had insisted it would meet all current and future obligations on its $80bn or so of debt (although some analysts reckon about the same sum is hidden off balance sheet).

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U.A.E. Leaders Try to Ease Concerns Over Dubai

By MARIA ABI HABIB And MIRNA SLEIMAN

DUBAI--The leadership of the United Arab Emirates tried Tuesday to steady the nerves of investors after concerns over Dubai's debt crisis sent stock markets across the Gulf sharply lower for a second day.

In a public statement, Dubai's ruler stressed federal unity across the U.A.E. amid concern that oil-rich Abu Dhabi will remain on the sidelines as it struggles to restructure the debts of its government-owned companies.

The country is working on "enhancing integration between the federal and local frameworks," said Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also Prime Minister of the U.A.E.

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In Dubai, refusal amid market selloff

An eerie calm engulfed Dubai's financial centre, even as the city-state's two stock exchanges and another down the road in Abu Dhabi took a hammering.

Investors rushed to unload shares of several corporations expected to bear the brunt of a sharp downturn in Dubai's economy, the result of the announcement last week that the powerful holding company Dubai World needs a break from making payments on its $59-billion (U.S.) in debts.

Abu Dhabi's market was down a record 8.3 per cent Monday, and the Dubai Financial Market fell 7.3 per cent, with several banks, transportation and construction firms at or near the daily allowable loss of 10 per cent. Over at the more modern Nasdaq Dubai, DP World, a major subsidiary of Dubai World and one of the few subsidiaries listed on an exchange, lost 14.88 per cent of its value, hovering all day just above the exchange's 15-per-cent loss limit per day.

Global markets have been gyrating wildly since Dubai World first announced plans for a debt standstill last Wednesday, just before holidays began. Emerging markets and Asia were hard hit last week, but largely bounced back Monday as investors hoped Dubai's problems would remain largely contained.

In Dubai, government and private offices had almost all been given a 10-day holiday with the religious festival of Eid al Adha, ending later this week with the celebration of the United Arab Emirates independence day.

Eid al Adha commemorates the sacrifice the patriarch Abraham was about to make of his son Ishmael. This year, however, the holiday might also be said to mark the sacrifice of those holding stocks in vulnerable Dubai companies.

Together, the Dubai and Abu Dhabi markets shed about $10-billion in capitalization yesterday. They would have shed more, but for the exchanges' strict limits. In both cities, there were many orders to sell; almost none to buy...read more