Nasdaq Dubai eyes product expansion
Depa converts its listing currency to UAE dirhams from US dollars
Nasdaq Dubai plans to expand its product offerings to investors at the same time offering flexibility, Hamed Ali, chief executive officer at Nasdaq Dubai, said yesterday.
Depa converted its listing currency to dirhams from US dollars, which had been the listing currency since its IPO in 2008.
The move was aimed to strengthen the company’s link to regional institutional and individual investors and support pricing. Depa is trying to spruce up volumes in its shares, its group chief executive Hamish Tyrwhitt said. “We have some long-term stable anchor investors, and we have a relatively small free float, and most of that free float is in the UAE, so we are trying to make it attractive to the local market here,” Tyrwhitt said on the sidelines of the listing. “We are trying to improve our liquidity and increase the size of the free float.”
The company has undertaken a number of steps to increase participation in its shares. It appointed Shuaa Capital as the liquidity provider, and started to report in Arabic and English.
“The way we look at the benefit of this platform [is] based on the stakeholders that are involved. For the issuer what does this mean? You are giving a lot of flexibility to the issuer in terms of which currency they want to list in. As Nasdaq Dubai, it allows us to attract more companies based on the flexibility we offer,” Ali told
“Today the investor is demanding listings in dirhams, or Saudi riyals. So the key message is flexibility. You are catering [to] the market depending on their needs by offering those products and currencies they would like to have,” Ali said.
Separately, Nasdaq Dubai also listed sukuk valued at $1.25 billion (Dh4.59 billion) and issued by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), bringing the total value of sukuk listings on the bourse to $11.5 billion.