Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank is set to issue an IPO in October that might raise as much as 16 billion riyals ($4.3 billion), which would be the second largest of 2014 behind China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Bloomberg’s Matthew Martin reports.
The IPO will list 300 million shares totaling 15% of the lender’s share capital, with an additional 200 million shares, or 10% of the bank, to be allocated to the Public Pension Agency, writes Ahmed Al Omran in the Wall Street Journal:
“The government controls its stake in the bank through its investment arm, the Public Investment Fund, which owns a majority of NCB. The fund is the biggest shareholder in the Saudi stock market with nearly 20.3% of total shares, with investments in banks, petrochemicals and other sectors.”
NCB was the first Saudi bank to be licensed in the Kingdom and was founded in 1953 by royal decree, according to the company’s website.
