EFG Hermes concludes Saudi Sulaiman Al Habib Group’s $700 mln IPO

Egyptian investment bank, EFG Hermes announced on Monday it had completed advisory on Sulaiman Al Habib Group’s 2.63 billion Saudi riyals ($700 million) initial public offering (IPO) on Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

Sulaiman Al Habib Group, one of the largest healthcare operators in the Middle East, began trading on Tuesday, March 17 under the Bloomberg stock symbol “SULAIMAN AB Equity”. The transaction saw the group offering 52.5 million shares, representing 15 percent of its share capital, to investors at 50.00 riyals per share.

The group operates across the kingdom, the UAE, and Bahrain. It owns and operates six healthcare facilities in Saudi Arabia and one in the UAE. This is in addition to 12 pharmacies in the kingdom and one in the UAE.

It also provides a range of medical and technical services, mainly for third parties.

Over the past 12 months alone, EFG Hermes has advised on a series of landmark equity transactions in the Gulf such as the IPOs of ACC, Finablr, and Aramco.

“Expanding both our advisory services and execution capabilities in KSA has allowed us to capitalise on the market’s continued momentum following the Kingdom’s upgrade to emerging market status on both the FTSE and MSCI indices.” EFG said in a statement.

At the end of 2019, following EFG Hermes’ advisory role on the Aramco IPO, the firm became the 28th largest Equity Capital Markets (ECM)a dvisor in the world and 20th largest when considering Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) alone.