Dubai: Abu Dhabi-headquartered supermarket chain Lulu Group International has hired investment bank Moelis & Co as advisor for their planned IPO next year, V. Nandakumar, Director - Marketing & Communications confirmed in a statement to Gulf News.
“Lulu group which has 239 Hypermarket and supermarkets across GCC is on an aggressive expansion in existing and new markets such as Iraq, North Africa etc,” he said. “It has sourcing offices in 23 countries including USA, UK, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Far East and China, which ensures uninterrupted supply to all its Hypermarkets.”
A boom in Gulf stock market listings is bucking the global trend, as the region reaps the benefits of high oil prices and investor inflows.
The supermarket chain plans to list next year, the sources said, after grocery businesses emerged unscathed from the pandemic.
Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ said two years ago that it was investing up to $1 billion in Lulu to help it expand in Egypt, with sources later saying it had bought a 20 per cent stake, implying an overall valuation for the company of $5 billion.
ADQ CEO Mohamed Hassan al-Suwaidi said at the time the deal reflected the fund’s wider commitment to investing in Egypt. ADQ set up a $20 billion joint investment platform with the Sovereign Fund of Egypt in late 2019 and has invested heavily in the most populous Arab country.
Before the ADQ deal was announced, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund, the Public Investment Fund, was in early discussions to buy a stake in Lulu. A deal never materialised.
It was not immediately clear how much of the company Lulu planned to float.
