Dubai: Foreign investors can pick up to 40 per cent in Dubai Islamic Bank, which has received clearance from the UAE Central Bank and Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) to raise the limit from 25 per cent.
DIB, one of the biggest names in the region’s Islamic banking space, thus joins the likes of Etisalat and du, which too recently raised the upper ceiling on foreign shareholding. The shareholding limit increase will raise DIB's weightage in the FTSE and MSCI global market indices.
“The bank has contacted Dubai Central Securities Depository to start the necessary procedures to activate the increase in foreign ownership limit to 40 per cent,” a statement said. “A disclosure about activating the increase in limit will be published, upon applying it on the Dubai Financial Market systems and website.”
DIB is currently trading at Dh5.05, well above the 52-week low of Dh3.78. It's high during this period was Dh5.15. As of today, the available foreign ownership share is 11.4 per cent.
Opportune time
"Global investor community has shown strong confidence in the UAE financial and capital markets as well as DIB, which has already seen a significant uptick in terms of share price performance since the start of this year," said Dr. Adnan Chilwan, Group CEO of DIB. "The increase in foreign ownership limit to 40 per cent will serve as another catalyst at a critical juncture with DIB’s alignment to the fast recovering economic environment.
“In addition, our recent H1-2021 results have demonstrated the bank’s resilience in these times, with a healthy trend across all key metrics around profitability, growth, capitalization and liquidity."
