Abu Dhabi’s stock market has hired former Bank of America Corp. Managing Director Kay French as adviser to the bourse’s new chairman.
(Bloomberg) — Abu Dhabi’s stock market has hired former Bank of America Corp. Managing Director Kay French as adviser to the bourse’s new chairman.
French spent more than a decade at Bank of America in Abu Dhabi, and worked with sovereign wealth funds and other government-related entities, according to her LinkedIn profile.
A representative for the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange confirmed the appointment. French wasn’t immediately available to comment.
The owner of the bourse, one of the emirate’s top sovereign investors ADQ, in January appointed Hisham Khalid Tawfiq Abdulkhaliq Malak as chairman of the exchange.
French’s appointment comes amid an IPO boom in the oil-rich Gulf, including Abu Dhabi, even as global volumes dwindle. And even though concerns over an economic slowdown have started to weigh on regional indexes, the market is far from shut.
The United Arab Emirates’ main oil company and Borealis AG raised $2 billion in the initial public offering of their chemicals joint venture earlier this year, in what was Abu Dhabi’s biggest-ever listing.
Meanwhile, the owners of Emirates Global Aluminium — Abu Dhabi fund Mubadala and Investment Corp. of Dubai — are weighing an IPO that could value the firm at more than $15 billion, Bloomberg has reported.
(Updates with ADX confirmation in 3rd paragraph)
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