Finance House foreign ownership?

[bio4jaa]

There is a rumour that Finance House of Abu Dhabi will soon allow GCC and Foreign Ownership, can anyone verify the rumour, also does someone have any information on the company and what it is worth ?

Cheers
Bio

[sharewadi]

I can't find anything to indicate whether or not that rumour is true. Where did you hear it?

Finance House (FH) shares must have seen one of the biggest increases since the Finance House IPO (in 2004) from AED 1 dh to currently a bit below AED 10. So just based on that, I wouldn't have thought they were particularly cheap. Although they are a bank, they seem to rely more on investments for income than actual customers, hence their earnings will be more volatile.

FH 2007 M9 profit AED 111m -48%, Q3 AED 31m +255% - 10 Oct 2007

Shares are not often traded.

Note that Gulf Finance House (GFH) which has a secondary listing on the DUbai Financial Market (DFM) was recently in the news about a large development in Algeria, and also setting up the First Energy Bank (which may do an IPO), but there's no connection between GFH and FH as far as I know.

Also unconnected, but with a similar name, is Kuwait Finance House (no listing in the UAE at present), which was also in the news as one of the bidders for a stake in Malaysia's RHB, which it looks like Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) will get (news yesterday).
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[sharewadi]

ADSM 04 March 2008:

(FH) Finance House announces holding board meeting on 5/3/2008 at 5:00 PM 04/03/2008

Anyone know what this says (it's in Arabic)? Looks like there are two items on the agenda...

... unless it's just parking directions .
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