Dubai's DP World seeks London stock market listing

Ambition: DP World believes it can appeal better to investors outside the Dubai exchange

11 April 2012

DP World, the Dubai ports giant which operates sea terminals around the world, is to list on the London Stock Exchange.

The firm said today that it planned to keep its primary stock-market listing on the Dubai Nasdaq index and seek a secondary listing in London.

The ports giant indicated last March that it was keen to find another listing to tackle "its continued disappointment with the markets valuation of the company".

Robin Byde, head of transport research at HSBC, said: "Dubai World wants to broaden the appeal of the company among the investor base.

"This has been talked about for some time and is not so related to the wider [debt] problems in Dubai or making acquisitions."

The plan to list in London follows DP World's announcement on Monday that it was pushing ahead with a £1.5 billion investment in a major, deep-sea container port in the Thames Gateway near Thurrock in Essex.

DP World, which bought P&O in March 2006, operates 49 terminals worldwide and presently has a market capitalisation of $7.14 billion (£4.5 billion). The company hopes to join the LSE during the second quarter of this year when the company could be a contender to enter the FTSE-100 index even as a secondary listing.

DP World is majority-owned by troubled Dubai World, which has taken care to emphasise that the profitable ports giant is unaffected by the debt woes of another Dubai World subsidiary, property firm Nakheel.