Asian Investors Close to Buying 46% of Kuwait’s Zain (Update1)

A group of Asian companies is close to buying 46 percent of Zain, Kuwait’s biggest telephone firm, Al Arabiya reported, without saying where it got the information.

The group, in the final stages of finalizing the agreement, offered 2 dinars ($6.97) a share for their stake in the Kuwaiti company, the Dubai-based news channel reported. Zain’s shares closed up 5.41 percent at 1.56 dinars today.

In August, Zain’s shareholders approved removing ownership restrictions from its statutes, paving the way for a foreign or local investor to own a majority stake. Shareholders agreed to cancel articles that limited individual ownership to 2 percent of the company’s capital and restricted public shareholding companies to holding no more than 5 percent.