MENA+ IPO window cracks open as sovereign funds keep writing checks

Two questions hang over the desk this morning: Is the regional IPO window actually open again, and where’s sovereign money going while everyone waits to find out? The window’s open a crack — Oman’s Omifco and Qatar’s Dandy have both set price ranges and Reliance Jio is readying the year’s biggest telecom float — but not for everyone, as Al Habtoor’s shelved DFM listing makes plain. On the second question, Mubadala and L’imad are answering with their checkbooks.

Al Habtoor Group has shelved its long-planned DFM IPO, with founder Khalaf Al Habtoor redirecting the group toward its own expansion pipeline. The plan had been a 5-15% listing of its cross-border hospitality arm. The proposed listing would have included a portfolio of hotels in Dubai, alongside international properties in Budapest, London, Vienna, and the US.

Gulf SWF-backed Indian telco Reliance Jio Infocomm is close to filing draft papers for a roughly USD 4 bn offering, after the company missed its previously-pledged 1H 2026 listing window. The move comes as the Nifty index shed roughly 8% this year, and India’s IPO market faces one of its weakest stretches on record. This year total IPO proceeds fell 39% y-o-y to INR 198 bn (USD 2.1 bn). Foreign investors have pulled a record USD 30.7 bn from Indian equities YTD and the worsening selloff may not fetch an adequate valuation for Jio. This leaves early backers — PIF, ADIA, and Mubadala among them — staring down a longer public-market hold than they had signed up for.

Two regional IPOs made it to pricing: Oman’s Omifco is looking to raise c. USD 678 mn from its Muscat Stock Exchange IPO, offering 1.6 bn shares at USD 0.3-0.4 per share. The pricing values the fertilizer producer at OMR 1 bn (USD 2.7 bn). Qatar’s Dandy, meanwhile, has priced its upcoming offering of 40% of its shares at QAR 1.37-1.42 a pop, setting it up to raise QAR 214 mn (USD 58.6 mn) from the IPO.

Mubadala keeps buying yield in Europe: Mubadala is putting another USD 200 mn into Europe’s power grid, buying a stake in Greenlink, the subsea interconnector linking the UK and Ireland. Greenlink is an infrastructure project that’s heavily regulated, sitting under dual regulatory oversight: Ofgem in the UK and Ireland’s Commission for Regulation of Utilities. This usually ensures long-duration, predictable revenue streams. The asset sits comfortably within Mubadala’s strategic tilt toward European energy transition assets.

L’imad-owned ADPower is moving to take full control of Abu Dhabi energy champion Taqa, after lifting its stake in Taqa to 98.12% just last week, clearing the threshold required to trigger a squeeze-out under UAE regulations. The mandatory acquisition process to buy out the remaining minority shareholders suggests Taqa’s days on the public market are numbered, with little practical reason for the company to be publicly traded once the acquisition is completed.

Egypt is likely to rebuff AD Ports’ bid for a 90% stake in Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling (ALCN), our Egypt desk reports. The Emirati port operator — bidding through its subsidiary Black Caspian Logistics — had offered EGP 27.47 per share last week to consolidate its control over the Egyptian maritime operator through a mandatory tender offer as part of a necessary regulatory step, sweetening its bid by 19.5% from an initial EGP 22.99 per share offer submitted late last year.

Also worth knowing

Bank AlJazira is weighing an Additional Tier 1 (AT1) issuance while peer Alinma moves toredeem existing sukuk.

India's Man Industries has bought Saudi's National Pipe Company (NPC) for USD 102 mn, handing the group instant local-content manufacturing inside the Kingdom as Saudi infrastructure build-out widens.

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