Saudi bourse Tadawul ends IPO wait, plans to list 30% stake

Saudi Arabia’s bourse Tadawul won approval for its long-awaited initial public offering in what could be one of the biggest in the exchange sector since Euronext’s $1.2bn listing.

The kingdom’s markets regulator has signed off on the exchange’s offering of 36 million of shares, according to a statement on Wednesday. The planned issue represents 30 per cent of the share capital of Saudi Tadawul Group Holding.

The offering could value it at between $3bn and $4bn, people familiar with the matter said last month.

Tadawul’s IPO has been on the cards since at least 2016, when it hired HSBC Holdings as an adviser. It put the offering on hold while it went through a process of increasing access for foreign investors, and then staged the listing of Saudi Aramco in 2019, the largest ever.

The process was resumed earlier this year and Tadawul replaced HSBC with Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and SNB Capital as financial advisers and global coordinators for the IPO.

To pave the way for the IPO, Tadawul also changed its corporate structure in April, creating subsidiaries for its exchange, clearing, depository and technology-services businesses.

Elsewhere, Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul is also eyeing an IPO, though past attempts have been called off while it awaits a favourable window. Boursa Kuwait went public last year by selling a 50 per cent stake, and National Stock Exchange of India has revived plans for its listing.

Euronext, the operator of markets in countries including Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Portugal, went public in 2014.