Jordan’s investment banking scene is changing, with lively action on the stage of initial public offerings, privatization and private equity deals, but also interesting goings-on offstage with some investment banking teams. In all that, Jordan is seeing an influx of Gulf capital into financial firms, which suggests that the country is migrating towards stronger involvement of regional investment banks but doing so as a secondary market for the Gulf, where the really big deals are going down. Upfront, the financial and corporate investment market in Amman is lively, with IPOs for two recently established financial firms announced for early November, one for First Jordan Investment Company, a financial services and real estate investment firm with significant shareholding by Kuwaiti and Qatari players, and the other for Arab Future Investment Company, a startup investment company targeting small and medium enterprises. Other new listings on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) since the
