Capital Markets

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Riyadh Building_dreamstime_12712018Saudi Arabia’s recently announced plans to privatise several key industries in the Kingdom has once again brought the Kingdom’s privatisation agenda back into the spotlight. The announcements form part of the countries transformational initiatives as part of The 2016-2020 National Transformation Plan (NTP) to improve public sector efficiency and boost non-oil revenues in the region, and will reportedly include airports, municipalities, hospitals and education.

Privatisation covers many types of transactions but typically includes the divestiture, whether by sale or lease,…

United Arab Emirates, new commercial Law

The UAE has recently passed a new commercial companies law and approved some key changes to its public takeover regime.

1. New UAE Commercial Companies Law

UAE Federal Law No. (2) of 2015 Concerning Commercial Companies (2015 CCL) was published in the Official Gazette on 31 March 2015 and comes into force on 1 July 2015.

The 2015 CCL is substantially similar to the 2013 draft of the Commercial Companies Law (2013 Draft CCL). The key differences from the 2013…

The Abu Dhabi Global Market, Abu Dhabi’s new financial free zone, located on Al Maryah Island, recently issued a first wave of draft regulations and related consultation papers.

The Global Market’s general approach in the draft regulations follows very closely the  English law model. In particular, the Global Market is proposing to apply English common law and certain English statutes in the Global Market. No draft financial services regulation was included in the first wave of regulation.…

The Middle East and North Africa region is on the cusp of a new energy revolution. US$50 billion has been set aside for investment in solar power projects by 2020, as MENA governments seek to maximise the long term value of their hydrocarbon resources by utilising solar energy to meet growing domestic consumption. Whilst these ambitious targets present a significant opportunity for potential sponsors of solar power projects in the region, there are a number of key considerations which sponsors…

The virtual currency market has emerged in the United Arab Emirates with Dubai’s first Bitcoin ATM introduced in April 2014. Middle East entrepreneurs have begun launching Bitcoin payment products and SMEs are beginning to realise the potential of such technology, with The Pizza Guys becoming the first restaurant in the UAE to accept Bitcoin payments.

Virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, combine financial and technological instruments and incorporate characteristics of money, accounting, networks and remittances into one concept. As this…

A number of GCC governments, including those in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have set ambitious clean energy and energy efficiency targets. As the fastest growing region in the world, the GCC’s population is expected to grow more than 53 million by 2020. Substantial amounts of investments will be required to finance the clean energy and energy efficient projects necessary to meet the needs of the future population.

Capital markets allow investors a low-cost alternative

Green bonds, which tie…

Tadawul

The MSCI upgrade of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to “emerging market’ status marked the beginning of increasingly liberalised GCC stock exchanges.

Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, the Tadawul, is by far the largest securities exchange in the GCC by market capitalisation. It is also the most liquid in terms of daily trading volumes and the most diversified in terms of issuers.

Most recently, The National Commercial Bank (NCB), Saudi Arabia’s largest bank, issued 25 percent of its…

Following last month’s announcement by the Saudi Arabian Capital Market Authority (the CMA) of its proposal to permit participation by qualified financial institutions directly on the Kingdom’s stock exchange (the Tadawul), the CMA has now published its Draft Rules for public consultation.

The Draft Rules include detailed provisions relating to qualified foreign investor (QFI) eligibility, assessment and approval process of investment applications by QFIs, investment limits on shares and the procedure for applications. The Draft Rules represent a significant…

The European Union (EU) enacted Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 (the Regulation), which contains ‘Stage 3’ sanctions against Russia. These sanctions resemble – but in other ways are different – from the latest US sanctions, and they amount to the stiffest anti-Russian actions taken by Europe since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps most significantly, the EU’s new sanctions are targeting sectors in Russia’s economy which are not directly connected to events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, as…

Whilst project bonds have for some time been a popular source of financing for projects in the US, they have historically been slow to gain momentum in other parts of the world, including the Middle East.

A number of explanations have been advanced for this – in the Middle East, the deep pool of bank market liquidity for Middle East projects, supplemented by funding from export credit agencies and development banks, has generally been sufficient to meet financing…