A total of 10 IPOs were issued in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the first half of this year, and together raised $3.95 billion, according to a report by to Zawya M&A Monitor on Tuesday.
The month of September heralded a strong comeback for initial public offerings in MENA, with four flotations on regional bourses, said Peter Abbou Investment Monitors at Zawya.
Abbou added that the most anticipated and largest IPO on the Dubai financial market since 2007 was that of Emaar Malls Group PJSC, which was successfully listed on 2 October.
"Over-subscription reached 30 times for institutional investors and 20 times for retail investors," he reported.
Moreover, the US$1.579 billion offer was the first to make use of the new IPO platform, which allows investors to subscribe to an IPO through an online application and also pay the subscription amount Abbou pointed out.
"Zain Bahrain B.S.C. revived its flotation plans, suspended in 2008, to become the first IPO on the Bahrain Stock Exchange since 2010," he added .
"The offering, however, failed to garner much interest even though the subscription period was extended by two weeks," Abbou explained. "Only 16.7 million shares out 40 million on offer were sold (34.8 percent)."
The other two IPOs in September were Oman’s Al Maha Ceramics and Tunisia’s Delice Holding.
He continued: the four IPOs, the only ones to take place during the whole of Q3 2014, raised a combined capital of US$1.692 billion, which compares well with the total US$150.7 million raised during the third quarter of 2013. Five rights issues in September, four of which were in Egypt, managed to raise total capital of $77.928 million.
Meanwhile, Emaar Malls’ widely successful IPO has led other companies in the Middle East and North Africa to consider flotations. Subscription in the $6 billion IPO by Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank, the largest equity sale in the Arab world, starts this week, Abbou added.
*Correction: The amount $3.95 billion in the lead was corrected from $2.26 billion.
