16 January 2017

By Shane McGinley

United Arab Emirates-based Daman Investments, which dropped plans to go public in 2015, is reviewing its options but is unlikely to revive a listing until at least 2018, a senior executive said on Monday.

“We have suspended our IPO but not cancelled our IPO plans,” Chairman Shehab Gargash told Zawya in an interview on the sidelines of a press event in Dubai.

“We are evaluating it every six months or so. We don’t believe we will be going public in 2017… It’ll be very unlikely, I’ll be surprised if we decide to do this year,” he added.

Daman said in November 2014 that it was planning to sell shares equivalent to 55 percent of the firm to the public and in March 2015 it said it was in the final stages of obtaining regulatory approval. However, as the performance of local stock markets declined in the wake of the low oil price, these plans were shelved.

The company sold a 22.7 percent stake to private investors in 2012, which, according to Reuters, valued the company then at 440 million dirhams ($120 million).

Founded in 1998, Daman Investments is backed by investors from the UAE and the wider Gulf region.

© Zawya 2017