The boom in Middle East initial public offerings has continued into 2023 and the United Arab Emirates’s capital is leading the way, hosting the world’s biggest listing so far.
Abu Dhabi’s main energy company raised $2.5 billion in the IPO of its gas business last week, the largest globally of 2023 and the first major deal in the region this year.
The share sale was 50 times oversubscribed with $124 billion of investor orders, a record for IPOs in the Middle East and North Africa, showing that demand for Gulf listings remains strong even as the region’s stocks underperform other emerging markets.
Before the dust could settle on Adnoc Gas, Abu Dhabi’s G42 announced the $495 million IPO of data analytics firm Presight AI Holding. And the emirate is expecting at least eight companies to list this year spanning technology and media to asset management, a senior government official said in an interview recently.
The activity firmly places Abu Dhabi at the forefront of the Middle East’s IPO boom at the start of 2023, with no listings in Dubai so far and just an $11 million deal in Saudi Arabia. Before Adnoc Gas, the biggest IPO of the region in 2023 was Turkish transformer manufacturer Astor Enerji’s 2.63 billion lira ($139 million) Istanbul float, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
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