Kuwait’s CMA to Start Stake Sale of Bourse to Local Investors
Kuwait’s CMA to Start Stake Sale of Bourse to Local Investors
(Bloomberg) -- The Kuwait Capital Market Authority will start next month a public offering of its 50% stake in the local stock exchange.
Only Kuwaiti citizens will be eligible to buy the shares, according to a press release on Sunday. The subscription period will run from Oct. 1 to Dec. 1, with the offering price set at 100 fils per share, or one-tenth of a dinar.
The offering is the second and final stage of a privatization process that started in February, when the markets regulator sold 44% of the company to a consortium of domestic and international investors.
- Boursa Kuwait will be the second in the Gulf to be publicly traded after Dubai’s.
- The consortium that bought the stake earlier this year comprised the Athens Stock Exchange, National Investments Company, First Investment Company and Arzan Financial Group.
- After the offering is completed, Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security will retain the remaining 6% in the company.
- Kuwait’s main equity index is up about 24% this year, the most within major peers in the region, amid bets of an upgrade from frontier to major emerging-markets gauges.
To contact the reporters on this story: Filipe Pacheco in Dubai at fpacheco4@bloomberg.net;Fiona MacDonald in Kuwait at fmacdonald4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net, Srinivasan Sivabalan
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.