Mohammed Sharaf has been chief executive of DP World since the company was formed in 2005, but has a pedigree in the business going back to his first job in the port of New York in the 1980s. He spoke to The Nationalas he became the first Emirati chief executive of a company listed in London.
DP World shares are about to be traded on the London Stock Exchange. How important an event is this in the company's history?
Listing in London is a very significant milestone for us. We have grown over the past 40 or so years from a local to a regional to a global company with operations in 31 countries around the world. Today we are the third-largest container terminal operator with around 10 per cent of the world market. We've come a long way in quite a short time, and this is yet another step in that journey.
In terms of being a publicly listed company, we have laid a solid foundation over the last three years with our listing on Nasdaq Dubai, but investors' feedback, particularly international fund managers', has been that while they like us and they'd like to invest, their internal rules prevent them doing so. They told us that a listing elsewhere would give them access. We looked at various different exchanges and we decided that London was the right place for a dual listing - the regulatory framework is very similar to Nasdaq Dubai's, a large number of emerging market funds are based in London and, last but not least, the time zones give us an extra day and an additional 12 hours trading over a week.
DP World will now be positioned alongside regional companies on Nasdaq Dubai and some of the world's leading companies on the London Stock Exchange - a great outcome for all our shareholders.
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