INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS (IPOS) IN GULF CO-OPERATION COUNCIL COUNTRIES

Initial Public Offering is the way for privately held and limited liability companies, partnership firm to mobilize huge sum of capital and get the legal status as public limited company. The boom in IPO market is indicated by number of IPOs coming up in that country. The full subscription or oversubscription of such offers indicate investors have got some information about that company and believe that they would get super normal returns by investing. Returns on IPO investment becomes the major contributor of success of and the regulatory framework available in an economy must provide for space abundantly for non-public companies to float IPOs in the market. At the same, the economic conditions prevailing in a country do play a significant role facilitating investors and companies to float IPOs. There are other important contributors for the success of an IPO. The Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC) namely Kingdom of Bahrain, State of Kuwait, State of Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are oil dependent economies and would like to diversity their oil-based economy to industrialized economies. The governments of these countries are moving towards establishing industries in the respective countries to create good employment opportunities and to channelize savings of people into productive investments.