UAE May See Public Listing Of Four Companies This Year

Dubai: The Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) is studying applications from four companies, which may get listed later in the year, Obaid Al Zaabi, chief executive officer at Securities and Commodities Authority told Gulf News.

“We have four companies which have expressed their intentions to go for IPO [Initial Public Offering] this year. The companies mainly belong to aluminium, electricity, services and financials,” Al Zaabi said.

The regulator is also working with companies in free zones, and other small and medium enterprises to offer easy and cheap financing requirements of these companies through IPO and at the same time diversify its offerings for investors in terms of industry.

“We are working with free zones, family business and small and medium enterprises to pave the way and soon we will come up with a structure wherein SME’s can be on our platform and obtain public finance, which will be relatively much cheaper than the classical financial model,” Al Zaabi said.

In mid-February, the UAE government introduced the 10x plan and the part of the plan is to list the SMEs in free zone on the Dubai Financial Market and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.

“All the regulatory framework will be ready by the this year, and by the end of this year or beginning of next they will be on the platform,” Al Zaabi said.

SCA is looking to reach a developed market status from the current emerging markets by 2020.

Cryptocurrency issuances:

“We are working with other regulatory jurisdictions to have cryptocurrency issuances regulated in our financial markets,” Al Zaabi, adding the regulator is working with IOSCO (International Organisation of Securities Commissions) to get more insights on crypto issuances.

Fund raising through Initial Coin Offerings or called as ICOs surged to $6.8 billion (Dh25 billion) in 2017 from $151 million in 2014, 2015 and 2016 combined, with analysts calling for increased regulations of this popular money raising technique among start-ups worldwide.

Box:

Boursa Kuwait hopes to list by early next year, according to its chief executive, Khaled Abdul Razzaq Al Khaled.

“We are getting ready for an IPO hopefully by the first quarter of next year. The reason of that is to rejuvenate and restructure the Kuwait Stock Exchange. The exchange underwent a rigorous infrastructure upgrade and we are in the process of implementing it,” Alkhaleed told a conference in Dubai.

Boursa Kuwait has implemented a free float requirement after removing the rule to offload 30 per cent for listing companies. The exchange also removed the profitability requirement for listing.