Regional companies are running toward their local public markets, leaving a trail of prospectuses behind them and welcoming individual and institutional investors from across the Middle East and abroad to partake in the region’s new found stable equity markets. The IPO market in the GCC continues to experience a flurry of new IPO announcements and, in the month of February, analysts say that a new record of announced, planned or in progress IPOs are in the works. Starting with the region’s largest economy, Saudi Arabia, had five IPO announcements in February. Although in terms of value, the announcement s are not big, the number of companies jumping on the IPO bandwagon speaks a lot about the current psychology and mood in the kingdom’s stock market. Most worthy IPO news is the announcement by the kingdom’s fixed-line telecommunication companies, who won the licenses in late 2007, revealed their plans to offer
