Regional brokerage SHUAA Securities is still on the lookout for acquisitions, but is waiting for prices to come down on the back of lower trading volumes.
“We are looking at Qatar and Oman if things come up,” chief executive Mohammed Ali Yasin said.
The company would also be interested in snapping up Kuwaiti peers if ownership rules were relaxed.
“Companies will be a bit more receptive to your valuations as time goes by. The less market volume, the less income they have. That means lower projections for growth for those companies,” he said.
SHUAA Securities is the brokerage arm of SHUUA Capital and has $1.25 billion in assets under management. Yasin estimates that his company has a market share of between 4.5 and 5 percent.
“We need someone that adds market share or another client base. We’re not just going to do it for the sake of doing it,” he said.
SHUAA Capital, the largest investment bank in the UAE, swung to a loss of AED577.4 million ($157.2 million) in the fourth quarter of last year, compared with a profit of AED213 million in the corresponding period the year before.
It said in February that market conditions this year are likely to be tough.
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