The first, Centurion Investment’s 1.2 billion USD purchase of a 40 per cent stake in Abu Dhabi‘s New Medical Centre (NMC) Healthcare back in January, was the second-largest deal of the year. Currently the emirate’s largest privately owned healthcare company, the NMC deal is further evidence of increased mergers and acquisitions targeting healthcare companies across the region.
The second, in May saw Qatar National Bank raise 3.5 billion USD from a fully subscribed one-share-for-four rights offer. The issue was a bid at boosting the bank’s core capital, which according to forecasts, will help make it into the biggest Gulf Arab lender in the near future. The move had its skeptics. Nick Stadtmiller, a fixed-income analyst at Emirates NBD, the United Arab Emirate’s biggest bank, is on record as stating that, “the global macro-economic environment is not particularly conducive to an international bond sale”. QNB representatives have countered by claiming that they have “the strongest liquidity of all the Qatar banks” and so are in a position of “strength rather than weakness”, a view shared by Jaap Meijer, chief financial analyst at Middle Eastern research and analysis group, AlembicHC Securities.
Out of a total of 222 transactions by Middle East-based companies, mergers and acquisitions accounted for 10.2 billion USD during the first half of 2011, up 43 per cent on the previous six months, according to corporate financial analysts, Bureau Van Dijk. Nor was this the only good sign. According to a report by Reuters, equity capital markets in the Middle East have increased by 81 per cent to stand at 8.3 billion USD in the first half of 2011, both trends offering hope that for investment companies, at least, financial prospects are not as bleak as they might have seemed during this otherwise tough economic year.
Who Qatar National Bank & Centurion Investment
What The two largest deals this year
Details Centurion Investment’s 40 per cent stake in NMC Healthcare, worth 1.1 billion USD followed by a rights-issue deal of 3.5 billion USD by QNB, the largest by far this year for the Middle East.
Why Despite the region’s political turmoil and amidst the global downturn, such deals show that investment in the region is on the rise and is even up 43 per cent compared to the year before.
