Business | Markets
Oman stock exchange expects to see at least three IPOs this year
Oman's bourse said on Tuesday it expects as many as three companies to sell shares in initial public offerings this year as foreign investment in the Gulf's best performing market rises.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:41 March 11, 2008
Muscat: Oman's bourse said yesterday it expects as many as three companies to sell shares in initial public offerings this year as foreign investment in the Gulf's best performing market rises.
"We are expecting two or three... they will hopefully list this year," Muscat Securities Market Chairman Abdullah Bin Salim Al Salmi said in Muscat.
One of the firms is an industrial company, Salmi said, declining to be more specific or say how much the IPOs are expected to raise.
"The more regulated the market becomes, the more confidence investors will have and thus more funds will be brought in," Salmi said.
Oman's Al Anwar Holdings said last month it aims to raise about $35 million in an IPO of its power transformer and switchgear producer Voltamp Manufacturing Co this month.
In September, investors offered 13 times more funds than the $156 million Galfar Engineering & Contracting Co, Oman's big-gest construction company, wanted to raise in the country's second-biggest IPO.
Oman's benchmark is up more than 16 per cent this year, building on a 62 per cent gain in 2007.
Non-Omani citizens owned almost 28 per cent of stock listed on the bourse at the end of February, compared with 22.2 per cent a year earlier, according to bourse data.
Foreigners can own as much as 70 per cent of stock in most listed Omani companies, and up to 100 per cent in some, depending on the industry and government approval.
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