The new Saudi mobile telephone company's initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed 51-fold, reaching 51 billion riyals (13.6 billion dollars), the Saudi financial group SAMBA announced Sunday. "This is the biggest IPO in the history of the Saudi stock market," the chief executive of SAMBA, Issa al-Issa, said in a statement.
Twenty million shares were on offer at 50 riyals (13.3 dollars) each, totalling one-billion-riyal (266.6 million dollar). But the number of applicants reached a staggering 4.28 million, said SAMBA.
A limit of 10,000 shares per person was set to allow room for small investors, in the first move of its kind in a public offering in the oil-rich kingdom.
The minimum per person was set at 10 shares, and the offering was limited to Saudi individuals, with companies barred.
The Saudi cabinet in August awarded Etisalat Consortium the second mobile phone licence in the kingdom's lucrative market after the Emirati telecom firm Etisalat made the highest bid of 12.21 billion riyals (3.25 billion dollars).
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