Kuwait’s stock exchange IPO will be oversubscribed, CEO says
The sale of half the exchange to local citizens began last month and will end Dec. 1
Kuwait City: The Kuwait Stock Exchange’s initial public offering is progressing well and will close next month oversubscribed, the bourse’s chief executive officer said.
“I’m 100 per cent sure it will be covered many times,” Mohammad Al Osaimi, the CEO of Boursa Kuwait, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Dubai.
The sale of half the exchange to local citizens began last month and will end December 1, with the offering price set at 100 fils per share, or one-tenth of a dinar. The IPO follows a 44 per cent sale earlier this year to a consortium of domestic and international investors.
Last month, Kuwait’s highest religious authority said the offering breached Sharia’s prohibition on interest and branded it “haram,” or forbidden. According to the authority, that’s because Boursa Kuwait facilitates trades in some companies that don’t comply with Islamic principles.
Al Osaimi said local legislation doesn’t state the bourse must be Sharia-compliant.
He also said the exchange has made all the changes necessary for index compiler MSCI Inc to upgrade it to emerging-market status in June. That should lead to as much as $3 billion of passive inflows to the country, Al Osaimi said.