Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House (GFH) has reported strong interest from Western institutional investors, days after the bank became the first Islamic finance house from the Gulf to list on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).
Conditional trading of its global depository receipts (GDR) started on the LSE on Friday and unconditional trading under the symbol “GFH” will start today.
“GFH GDRs started trading strongly, and 451,082 GDRs shares with a total value of $11.2 million at a unit price of $25.00 were traded on the first day,” said the bank in a statement. Each GDR represents 10 ordinary shares.
“The price achieved represents a premium of 7.7 per cent above the previous closing price in Kuwait and a premium of 23 per cent over the price when research was published and distributed internationally.”
Last week GFH offered 100 million shares to institutional investors in Europe and the US in the form of 10 million GDRs in a secondary issue. The issue was oversubscribed.
“The shares were supplied by existing shareholders in a strategic move designed to build the international profile of the bank and to give it greater access to international capital markets,” said the bank.
GFH is already cross-listed on three regional bourses – the Kuwait Stock Exchange, the Bahrain Stock Exchange and the Dubai Financial Market.
“We are extremely pleased and delighted with the strong response that this GDR has received from both mutual long-only funds as well as hedge funds,” said Peter Panayiotou, deputy chief executive of GFH.
“The issue was oversubscribed despite market conditions that had forced a number of other international issuers to withdraw their issues.
“The roadshow lasted two weeks and has been very useful in terms of establishing new relationships with institutions who have shown interest in working with us across our lines of business. The whole exercise has been very beneficial and worthwhile.”
