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| Al-Marri outlining the listing plans yesterday |
Qatar First Investment Bank (QFIB), which will soon be renamed Qatar First Bank, is planning to get listed at the Qatar Exchange by the last quarter of this year to further its growth and acquisition plans.
“We are working towards fulfilling all the necessary requirements to list the bank by the fourth quarter of 2012,” QFIB chairman Abdulla bin Fahad Ghorab al-Marri told the annual general assembly which gave the approval for filing of an application with the Qatar Financial Market Authority to list its shares in the QE.
QFIB has a total 1,299 individual and institutional shareholders, of which 58% are Qatar-based and the remaining 42% spread across the Gulf region.
The strategic move (to list) would provide the existing shareholders with the ability to trade their shares on the Qatari bourse and will provide the bank with access to capital for future acquisitions and growth plans, according to him.
It will be the first Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) entity to be listed on the domestic bourse.
In order to facilitate the listing process, the extraordinary general assembly approved to change the currency denomination of the bank from dollar to riyals.
“This move will align the bank with its Qatari listed counterparts in terms of financial reporting and performance evaluation,” he said, adding shareholders also approved to readjust the authorised capital to QR2bn ($550mn) from QR3.65bn ($1bn) in a step to waive the remaining non-paid portion of the authorised capital.
QFIB has also received approval from the QFC Regulatory Authority to upgrade its licence to ‘Category 5’, which would enable it to provide deposit and financing services.
The bank reported a total income of $233.7mn (QR850.6mn) and a net income of $25.8mn (QR94mn), representing a 20% increase over 2010. The general assembly ratified a cash dividend of 6%.
It has invested $333mn (QR1.21bn) year-to-date, of which healthcare received 31.2%, industrials (30.7%), energy (27.6%), real estate (5.7%) and financial services (4.9%).
“2011 was a year full of challenges for investment banking in the region. The still daunting European sovereign debt crisis and closer home the Arab Spring certainly impacted the global and regional economies,” al-Marri said.
However, he added that the Gulf economies are largely shielded from this market instability mainly due to strong oil prices and robust government spending.
Highlighting that the outlook for investment banking in the region was fraught with challenges, Emad Mansour, QFIB CEO, said “there is no doubt that once these hurdles have been addressed the medium-to-long term prospects for the private equity sector will be promising due to the region’s sound macroeconomic fundamentals manifested in favourable demographics, natural resources and aggressive government spending.”