Stocks prone to speculative trade dragged Dubai's equity index down on Wednesday while Egypt's blue chip developer Talaat Mostafa outperformed on news its former chairman has been pardoned and named chief executive. Dubai's index fell 0.7 percent in the lowest daily volume in one year.
Shares of builder Arabtec dropped 8.5 percent; on Wednesday the company said it has raised 1.5 billion dirhams in equity as part of its recapitalisation programme and "extinguished the company's accumulated losses of AED 4.6 billion as at December 31 2016".
GFH Financial, the most heavily traded stock, however, climbed 3.1 percent on news that it had agreed to sell part of its real estate portfolio, which it said had an "approximate value" of $55 million. The book value of the asset is $20 million. In neighbouring Abu Dhabi, some large caps, which were the main drag on the bourse earlier in the session, reversed course and helped take the index 0.4 percent higher. First Abu Dhabi added 1.4 percent to 10.65 dirhams ($2.90) after hitting a session low of 10.40 dirhams.
Kuwait's index closed flat in very thin trade. Blue chip banks outperformed with Warba Bank adding 1.2 percent while Boubyan Petrochemical lost 1.0 percent. Cairo's Talaat Mostafa Group jumped 5.8 percent in unusually heavy trade after the developer said it has appointed former chairman Hisham Talaat Mostafa as its chief executive.
Last Friday Mostafa was among 502 prisoners pardoned by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He had been sentenced in 2010 to 15 years in prison for hiring a hitman to kill a Lebanese pop star. He was pardoned on health concerns, security sources told Reuters. Shares of Telecom Egypt rose 1.5 percent following last Thursday's news that the state-owned landline monopoly will secure a loan of up to 13 billion Egyptian pounds ($718.23 million) to improve infrastructure and mobile internet services.
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