Stop Press Muscat Market News. The French bail out of Bank Muscat

Well, 2 big stories on the Muscat Stock Exchange today.

Minnows take a tidy profit
First of all the small shareholders lucky enough to receive their 457 shares in the massively over-subscribed VoltAmp Energy IPO started dumping them onto a market of hungry institutional investors today, after the price as expected bumped up from the (below book) offer price of 540 biasa to a nice 1.5 rial, taking their 500 rial profit. If you were one, congrats. A very easy way to make around $2,500 (because, obviously, both you and your wife registered, right?). So far 11,783,740 shares have traded today. If you know a broker, buy him a beer later. It must have been a pretty hectic morning.

The French bail out of Bank Muscat
But (for me) the real news today was a massive change in the shareholding of Bank Muscat, with the sale of 173.3 million rials worth at a price of around 1.890. That’s almost 8% of the total shares. The sellers were the French bank Societe Generale, and the buyers… apparently the Diwan, otherwise known as The Court of Royal Affairs. Looks to me like the French were, peut etre, un petite miffed at the change in regulations a few days ago hurting their profits (along with the likelihood of more to come), and so the Government bought them out before they made a fuss. Presumably the Government exercised a right of first refusal for the shares.

The Court of Royal Affairs was already Bank Muscat’s largest shareholder, with around 17% of the shares. This will bring them to 24.8%. The Government also indirectly controls another 13% of shares though various State pension funds.

I can’t wait to see the statement from Societe Generale’s Eric Faivre, CEO for the Gulf Region, as to why they have gotten out of Bank Muscat...