Al Qudra shelves initial public offering

SALE DELAY: Al Qudra said it would postpone the IPO until later this year. (Getty Images)

Abu Dhabi-based Al Qudra Holding said on Sunday it was delaying what would have been the UAE's second-largest initial public offering (IPO), less than two weeks after announcing it would start raising $1 billion this week.

Al Qudra, which has 30 units in industries including real estate and infrastructure, said on February 19 it planned to offer 55% of the company in the first week of March, initially looking to raise 3.7 billion dirhams ($1.01 billion).

Two investors who attended a meeting with firms including Al Qudra - organised by IPO adviser Shuaa Capital on February 23 - expressed disappointment with a presentation Al Qudra Chairman Salah Al-Shamsi gave at the meeting.

"I went into it quite interested and came out saying I was not going to invest," said one investor who attended the three-day meeting in Dubai and who would only speak on condition of anonymity.

Al Qudra on Saturday named Mahmood Ibrahim Al-Mahmood it chief executive.

Given "recent discussions around the revised companies' law, allowing for UAE institutions to offer less than 55% through an initial public offering... Al Qudra's board of directors has elected to capitalise on this opportunity and postpone the offering to a later date during 2008," Al Qudra said in a statement on Sunday. It was not more specific.

Makram Kubeisy, co-head of investment banking at Shuaa, could not immediately be reached for comment. An official at Al Qudra's communications advisers, Bell Pottinger Middle East, declined to comment further.

Under the IPO, investors would initially have only paid for the equivalent of 25%, and pay for the remainder of the sale later.

The IPO would have been the second-biggest in the UAE after Dubai's DP World, which raised almost $5 billion in November. Its shares have since declined 31%. (Reuters)

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