Bahrain’s Transport Ministry told Reuters yesterday that an initial public offering (IPO) is planned of shares in the kingdom’s Khalifa bin Salman Port, a privately-operated container terminal.
It would be Bahrain’s first big IPO since 2010, Reuters said.
The port has capacity to handle about 1m twenty-foot-equivalent (TEU) containers. It is operated by APM Terminals in a 25-year concession. The Dutch company also owns 80 per cent of the port’s equity.
The port’s concession agreement allows APM to convert the company that owns the port from a closed joint stock company to an open joint stock company after five years from the start of operations.
Reuters reported a Bahrain Transport Ministry spokesman as saying that “(t)his is purely an implementation of the agreement with the port operator.”
For more see www.meed.com