Will Al Ansari IPO get other family businesses to follow?

Will Al Ansari IPO get other family businesses to follow?

Dubai: A lot is changing for UAE and Gulf family businesses, with governments bringing in new initiatives, rules and pathways for these legacy enterprises to fit in with the newer ways of doing things. One such reform has been to encourage these family conglomerates to think going public. Against this background, what Al Ansari Financial Services will achieve with its 10 per cent stock market float goes way beyond being another successful IPO from the UAE. The move by the family enterprise, with its strong hold in the remittance space, becomes the pace setter for more of its peers to do the same. At least think along these lines. “We are embarking on this IPO journey to really protect the five-and-a-half decades of success we’ve had, preserve it and reposition the company for its next phase of growth,” said Rasheed Al Ansari, CEO of Al Ansari Financial Services, in a recent media briefing. “It is very different when I go to new markets and new jurisdictions and say I’m a family business they talk to you differently than when you are a listed company and this is what we want to achieve.” Elsewhere in the Gulf, the big systemically important