Tadawul to go public: Al-Ghamdi

08/05/2014 06:32 AST

The chief executive of Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul stock market said on Wednesday the exchange was looking to go public with an initial public offering and would be looking to hire an advisor soon.

“Yes we are going to go public,” Adel Al-Ghamdi said at a financial conference Euromoney in the capital Riyadh. “That’s our aspiration. We will be applying for it extremely soon and we will be looking to hire a financial advisor soon.”

Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange plans to sell shares in an initial public offering, according to the chief executive officer of the Arab world’s largest bourse.

Tadawul, as the gauge is known, will hire advisers soon for the share sale, Al-Ghamdi said at a conference in Riyadh Wednesday. That would make it the second market in the Gulf Cooperation Council to go public after Dubai’s.

“The Saudi stock exchange is going through tremendous transition at this stage,” Al-Ghamdi said. “We want to look at foreign equity and cross-listings with Saudi Arabia and hopefully next year, by the beginning of 2015, we’ll start reaching out to GCC investors who are very interested to list in our platform.”

Saudi Arabia’s $530 billion stock market has rallied 14 percent so far this year, compared with a loss of 0.2 percent for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and an advance of 12 percent for the MSCI Frontier Markets Index.

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal said last year that the Kingdom should take “effective measures to invite foreign investors” and open up its stock market.

Saudi companies are planning to raise funds as investor demand increases, with about 35 businesses working with financial advisers on IPOs, Al Ghamdi said.

Agencies