Gulf Finance House listed in Bahrain

Gulf Finance House (GFH) shares recorded a trading volume of nearly 90,000 on the first day of listing on the Bahrain Stock Exchange yesterday, eventually closing at $1.35. The scrip opened for trading at $1.20.

GFH will also be listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange on Sunday.

"While GFH is headquartered in Bahrain, its shareholders are spread all across the GCC - in fact, many are based in Kuwait. Hence our decision to list the company on both these bourses was to be close to our shareholders," said Esam Janahi, chief executive officer.

"Another underlying reason behind our listing was the high market demand from investors across the GCC who wanted to be part of this blue chip institution."

Set up in 1999 as an offshore Islamic bank, GFH's shareholders include Dubai Islamic Bank, Kuwait Finance House, Bahrain Islamic Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, and Kuwait's Gulf Investment House.

No single shareholder holds more than a 12 per cent stake in the company.
The official declined to specify the number of outstanding shares available on completion of the listings in Bahrain and Kuwait.

"It totally depends on the investment strategy of our existing shareholders. We do, however, expect to see a fair to heavy amount of trading in the foreseeable future as we believe there exists a substantial amount of positive interest among investors across the GCC," said Janahi.

GFH, which recently raised its capital base from $65 million to $135 million through a rights issue, is the main engine behind the development of the $1 billion plus Bahrain Financial Harbour. It had set up a special purpose vehicle to oversee the project.

"The Financial Centre Investment Co. (FCIC), which will invest in the Financial Centre component of the Bahrain Financial Harbour project, has been capitalised at $100 million. Currently we have achieved a subscription level of around 60-65 per cent," said Janahi.

"We expect this fund to be fully subscribed in a few weeks."

For the medium term, "We have some extremely interesting projects that will be launched during the years. These include a property trading business; large leisure property development projects in Dubai and Bahrain, as well as other income producing, high-yield real-estate based investments throughout the GCC."

GFH has assets under management of about $1 billion, with $250 million of it unleveraged.