Davos 2023: Mubadala says Emirates Global Aluminium IPO may happen this year

Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), the Middle East’s biggest producer of the metal, may sell shares to the public as soon as the third quarter of 2023, according to the head of one of its biggest shareholders.

“It will happen maybe this year. We’ll see how markets react,” Mubadala Investment Co. chief executive officer Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. “If it’s appropriate and makes sense for us and the shareholders, we might go in the third quarter or fourth quarter.”

EGA, which is owned equally by Mubadala and Investment Corp. of Dubai, has been examining the possibility of an initial public offering for a number of years. It was set to hire three US banks as lead underwriters of the deal in 2021 that could have valued the company at more than $15bn, Bloomberg reported at the time.

A listing of EGA this year would follow a boom for IPOs in the region that started in 2022 and fetched almost $23bn — over half of the proceeds in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Aluminum had a roller coaster year in 2022, initially rallying as much 45 per cent to hit a record high in March on worries about Russian supply, before slumping on mounting concerns about demand. Prices have rebounded strongly in 2023, with Goldman Sachs Group among those calling for a sharp move higher as consumption recovers in China and Europe.