The initial public offering of Aluminium Bahrain, or Alba, was fully covered with around 75 per cent of demand coming from institutions and the remainder from retail investors including employees, the chairman of the company told Dow Jones on Wednesday.
Speaking during an exclusive interview at a ceremony to mark Alba's listing on the London Stock Exchange, Mahmoud Hashim Al Kooheji said he was very pleased with the outcome of the IPO, which he described as a "long overdue step" for Bahrain and the company.
"The IPO was done after at least three years of effort of really putting the company back in shape," he said. "The company has the right management now, has the right strategy, has the right key performance indicators; now we're looking forward to the future. There is no looking backward-we feel confidence in the way this company will perform in the future," he added.
The IPO has seen Alba's ordinary shares listed on the Bahrain Stock Exchange, with global depositary receipts representing the ordinary shares listed in London, following the sale of a 10 per cent stake in the company by its shareholder Mumtalakat Holding Co, Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund.
Al Kooheji said the company targeted investors interested in the aluminium industry as it drummed up support for the listing. "We didn't go for a mass public listing that would be two or three times oversubscribed with people buying because they thought it would be quick money; this is industry, it's a long term investment," he added.
Alba is the world's fourth largest aluminium producer and majority owned by Mumtalakat, with Saudi petrochemical giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp, better known as Sabic, also holding a stake. Currently, Alba's annual capacity to produce aluminium, a metal used in the automotive and construction industries, is 870,000 metric tonnes.
Etihad Atheeb
Saudi Arabia's Etihad Atheeb Telecommunication Co, or EATC, hasn't received the approval of the kingdom's Communication and Information Technology Commission, or CITC, to provide all services included in its license, pan-Arab Asharq Al Awsat daily reported yesterday citing Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz, EATC's chairman.
Prince Abdul Aziz has asked the CITC to be fair to his company and to allow it to provide all services included in the licence, the paper reports.
Abdul Aziz was talking during the launch cere-mony of Atheeb NetSol, a Saudi joint venture between Atheeb Group and US-based NetSol Technologies, the daily says.
EATC launched its operations in 2009.
Agility
Kuwaiti Logistics firm Agility has not received an official offer from France Telecom for its stake in Iraq's Korek Telecom, but welcomes any, its chairman said in published remarks yesterday.
"Exiting is possible if the company receives a suitable price level that results in good revenue," Tarek Sultan told the Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al Watan.
France Telecom's head Stephane Richard said that its board planned to meet on Wednesday to discuss buying a minority stake in the Iraqi firm, but said no decision had been taken yet. Reuters reported on Monday that the board of France Telecom was planning to meet on Wednesday to weigh taking a stake in Korek.
Korek, Iraq's third-largest mobile phone operator, obtained its national wireless licence in 2007 and has roughly 3 million customers.
Based in Iraqi Kurdistan, Korek competes with larger rivals Zain and AsiaCell, which is partly owned by Qatar Telecommunications
Industries Qatar
Industries Qatar, the second-biggest petrochemicals maker in the Middle East, had its share-price estimate raised to 165 riyals (Dh166) at AlembicHC.
Sovereign debt sale
The Syrian government will sell sovereign debt for the first time on Monday, the state-owned Syrian Arab News Agency said, citing comments from Finance Minister Mohammad Al Hussain.
