Dubai faces up to rivals as it plans stock exchange revival with IPO offerings

Dubai faces up to rivals as it plans stock exchange revival with IPO offerings

Competition is heating up in the capital markets of the United Arab Emirates, as Dubai seeks to revive its ailing stock exchange with a flurry of initial public offerings.

The government of the UAE’s commercial hub plans to privatise 10 state-backed companies, listing some of their shares on Dubai’s domestic bourse in a bid to rival the success of neighbouring emirate Abu Dhabi and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia. Officials also hope to root more regulatory oversight within Dubai, rather than keeping it at a federal level.

Those moves come after several lacklustre years for Dubai equities, which have failed to revisit the dizzy heights reached during the mid-2000s.

Dubai’s government launched its stock exchange with a Dh50m ($14m) bank loan in 2000. Within half a decade, the fledgling bourse had soared to a total market capitalisation of $120bn, three times the size of Dubai’s gross domestic product at the time.

But the region’s property-fuelled market subsequently collapsed under the weight of the 2007-09 global financial crisis, and has remained subdued since oil prices slumped in 2014. An index tracking the city-state’s stocks — priced in dirhams — fell about two-thirds in the 16 years between its record high in November 2005 and the end