Saudi Arabia’s Olayan family, which runs one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest conglomerates and is one of the richest in the Kingdom, may “revive plans to take some of its companies public,” according to a report today in Bloomberg.
“We are ready to roll,” Chief Executive Officer Nabeel Al-Amudi said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Now the infrastructure is there.”
The report says that Olayan Financing Co. is considering an IPO of a holding company of about 25 units, and is also weighing an IPO of some of its operating firms.
The Olayan Group is currently a fully private, multinational enterprise established in 1947 by Sulaiman Olayan. Olayan’s son Khaled and his three daughters Lubna, Hayat and Hutham Olayan all sit on the Board of Olayan Financing company, the holding entity for the Olayan Group’s operations in the Middle East. The group has interests in construction, trading, food processing and restaurants, cleaning products, paper, plastics and fiber, office equipment, and more.
Olayan Financing Co. has eyed an IPO before, but less-than-ideal economic conditions in 2017 caused the group to put on hold its plans to go public.
But a hot IPO market in Saudi Arabia is providing a better climate for an Olayan IPO, Al-Amudi who was named CEO in May, said.
“We’ve just seen a number of very successful IPOs in the Saudi market that we participated in as investors.”
