The UAE Cabinet has approved the listing of the shares of cooperatives on the local financial markets.
This move by the Cabinet, which was chaired by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, seeks to strengthen the cooperatives sector’s regulatory environment while also driving economic returns.
The initiative, the first-of-its-kind in the region, is aimed to grow the cooperatives’ sector contributions to the national economy, enhance their competitiveness and help the sector benefit from the disruptive services provided by the UAE bourses in terms of transparency, resilience and quick management of services.
According to the Cabinet, the decision allows the financial markets to establish special platforms for the registration, trading and transfer of the shares of cooperatives so that they are independent of the initial public offering (IPO) and public trading platforms on the bourses.
In addition to a wide range of successful IPO on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX), the Arab world’s second-largest market, Dubai plans to list 10 government and state-owned companies on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) as part of a broader strategy to stretch the financial market’s size to $816.7 billion.
In 2021, DFM launched an incentives program to encourage new IPOs and listings from private companies in key economic sectors that strongly contribute to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
The new decision provides the financial markets with the power to establish and develop terms and conditions that determine procedures, standards, requirements, models and mechanisms on registration, trading and complaints.
