AFI Developments has suffered a 60% fall in its net asset value since June last year after being particularly impacted by the volatility of the Russian market.

In its end of year results, the Israeli developer said that its investment property portfolio had fallen 58% in value since June last year, and 53% since 31 December 2007 to $2.47bn.

The company was hit by $189.98m writedowns, which came mostly in the last quarter, leading to a pre-tax loss of $107.86m for the year compared to a profit of $215.6m in 2007.

It said it continued to access debt financing for its development projects.

However, it said that would be classifying eight of its early stage development projects in Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) worth $295.3m as ‘land bank’ without ascribing a market value to them.

It said this was because its valuer, Jones Lang LaSalle, had concluded that the unstable market conditions in Russia presented ‘abnormal uncertainty’.

Similarly, its hotel assets that have completed or are nearing completion, have been re-classed as ‘property, plant and equipment’ and were excluded from the company’s overall valuation.

Lev Leviev, chairman of AFI Development, said: 'The extremely difficult conditions in the global and Russian real estate markets have resulted in AFI Development reporting a loss in 2008. We have nevertheless retained our strong cash position and are continuing the development of our core projects.

'The Moscow market has yet to stabilise and we see few signs of an early recovery in 2009. We are carefully calibrating the progress of our developments in order to complete our key projects cost-effectively while maintaining our financial strength.'

It said that its strong cash position allowed it to pay out a total end of year dividend of $200m, or $0.3817 a share.

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