It is not so long ago that UAE-listed firms were being admonished for their opaque attitude to operational transparency. Even in the bull markets of 2007 when share price growth was meteoric, the lack of clarity over executive salaries was a gripe among investors who could never be sure how much executive compensation reflected performance.
One bear market later, and things are looking rather different.
“There are no investors who understand healthcare in the UAE, it is not a mature market.”
A pretty bold statement by Khalifa Bin Butti, Executive Vice Chairman of NMC Health, the Abu Dhabi based company which recently floated 30% of its shares on the London Stock Exchange, raising AED 700m in the process. The London listing provides funding to allow NMC to exploit opportunities in the GCC healthcare market.
March was a busy month for the ADXas over 2bn shares changed hands. Highly traded stocks included Dana Gas (272m shares), Methaq Takaful Insurance (105m shares), RAKCC Cement (143m shares), RAK Properties (242m shares) and SOROUH Real Estate (501m shares). However, despite this, all five of these securities saw their share prices fall slightly in March.
