"Daman": It's time to invest in UAE equities

Daman Investment Company confirmed that the current time was conducive to investment in UAE capital markets, due to many factors, including increased public spending and high level of foreign investment.

This happened during the annual forum organized by the company yesterday in Dubai on the current and future financial landscape, with stock market trends and local and global economic trends.

Shahab Gargash, president and founding member of Daman Investments, told reporters on the sidelines of the forum that the company was aiming to create an investment fund outside the UAE this year to invest in equities and income instruments. fixed in the Middle East. He added that the company was still waiting for the approval of the Luxembourg central bank to launch the fund.

He added that he did not exclude the company's IPO from the Dubai financial market, but that no plans were planned at the moment. The company had already announced plans to launch in 2015, but the deterioration in oil prices led to its postponement.

He pointed out that the Gargash Group has become the owner of the majority stake in Daman Investment after acquiring the shares of foreign investors. It is intended to increase its concentration on the financial markets and its traditional activity in the field of financial intermediation in general.

Catalysts

Ali Al-Adoo, head of badet management at Daman Investments, said the market-based factors were interbank mergers, rising oil prices, falling interest rates, Liquidity improvement and deterioration of market conditions.

The government of Abu Dhabi has announced a major investment program and economic incentives of 50 billion dirhams for the period from 2019 to 2021. He said the national oil company of Abu Dhabi was intended to increase its production capacity and planned to spend 486 billion dirhams between 2019 and 2023, which would stimulate the growth of the sector Your creates a lot of jobs.

Positive effects

"The Expo will have a positive impact on the Dubai economy, which could result in an increase in tourism spending of around 12 billion AED, or nearly 3% of projected GDP in Dubai in 2020 ", did he declare.

He said Expo Dubai would outperform the Milan show in 2015 in terms of country-level participation (192 vs. 145), according to estimates, to reach a gross value added of 122 billion dirhams over the 2013- 2031, or 1.5% of GDP. Total nominal in Dubai during the same period.

He pointed out that the decision to increase the percentage of participation of foreign investors in the country's trading companies up to 100% in 122 activities spread across 13 economic sectors would support the competitive environment of the country. State and would create investment opportunities, thus strengthening its image on the map of the global economy.

Active flows

He predicted that the opening of foreign equity ratios in companies would lead to an active inflow of global and emerging funds due to the growing weight of companies in the MSCI and FTSE Russell Emerging Markets indices.

He also predicted that mergers and acquisitions in the banking sector would result in a significant increase in the profitability of some large banks because of the impact of the integration of mergers and the acquisition of shares of increased market in loans and deposits.The number of banks in the UAE is still large, with more than 50 local banks And internationally, serving only 9.5 million people, he said that large real estate developers are gaining more market shares than small developers facing cash flow problems.

Distributions

He added that cash dividends from publicly traded companies in the UAE averaged 4.6%, which is above the average growth of 2.7% in emerging markets.