Most of the big action has been in the e-commerce sectors

healthy thing because it builds more transparency and puts Aramco on a global level with its peers in the oil industry,” Kutaifan said.

But Saudi Arabia is not the only game in town. There are some multibilliondollar IPOs coming up too in the UAE, which is EIB’s home market. Big corporations like Emaar Properties, Emirates Global Aluminium, the Abu Dhabi conglomerate Senaat and education business GEMS are all considering IPOs — in the UAE and on foreign exchanges — in the near future.

“For offerings of that amount and that scale the companies have to tap the international markets, and maybe look at listing venues beyond the region, like London,” Kutaifan said.

EIB’s business model mixes proprietary investments like fixed income and loans with fee-driven income from asset management and investment banking. Some evidence of the benefits for EIB that would come from a sustained boom in IPO and M&A activity came in the last half-year, when Chief Executive Khaled Sifri was able to report a jump in net profits, boosted by the effect of a single transaction in the UAE education sector.

“The half-year figures were boosted by success fees for one deal. That was a big fee generator. But the figures also reflected building the assets under management and the fixed-income business, and all of these contributed to the figures,” Kutaifan said.

Once the region’s IPO spree gets under way, he is obviously looking to many more such profit leaps.