by business editor Trevor Sturgess

Dover-based P&O Ferries says it is business as usual despite the soaring debt crisis of its parent company in Dubai.

The cross-Channel operator said today (Monday) that the situation posed no risk to its operations or its two new ferries being built in Finland at a cost of £360m and due to come into service in 2010 and 2011.

P&O is owned by Dubai World, a conglomerate of hundreds of companies, many of them in the property sector. Last week, the Dubai government revealed that it was asking creditors of Dubai World, said to have debts of some £38bn, to agree a debt freeze while the state-owned company was restructured.

It asked for a delay in repaying £2.1bn of debt due from Nakheel, the government-owned property group. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi had been expected to bail out its neighbouring emirate but insisted it would be selective in its financial help.

The announcement caused jitters in stock markets around the world, and there were record falls when the stock exchange in the United Arab Emirates opened after the Eid religious holiday.

A P&O spokesman said the owners left the company to make its own decisions and funding arrangements, the ferry operation was a profitable company and that is what the owners wanted to hear.

“Our financing does not rely on support from our owners Dubai World,” he said. “If we want money to build new ships, we go and raise it ourselves, we don’t go to Dubai World.”

Website bloggers have been speculating that the crisis could trigger a sale of P&O. But the spokesman said there was absolutely no evidence for this. In the context of the colossal overall Dubai World debt, P&O was a relatively small operation. “It’s difficult to see why they would want to get involved. It’s not that they’re hands-off, in terms of the day-to-day business, all they are interested in is if we turn a profit.”

Dubai World - its strapline is “The Sun Never Sets on Dubai World” - bought P&O in 2006 for £3.9bn. The tiny desert sheikdom of Dubai has been gripped by a property boom over the past few years, but there have been signs in recent months that it was heading for a crash.