Amlak Finance said its shareholders had approved a plan to readmit its shares for trading on the Dubai Financial Market after an absence of six years.
The Sharia-compliant mortgage lender, which is 45 per cent owned by Emaar Properties, announced that shareholders at its annual general meeting on Thursday gave the go-ahead for readmission.
Ratification by shareholders is one of the requirements to win final regulatory approval from the Securities and Commodities Authority for Amlak’s shares to resume trading.
“The AGM was the final major step in our efforts to bring the company back to trading activity,” said Ali Ibrahim Mohammed, the company’s vice chairman.
A request will now be submitted to the SCA and the DFM with shares expected to start trading next month, Amlak said.
At the meeting, its first since 2008, shareholders also approved financial statements for the period 2008 to 2014 and a new board of directors was elected.
Amlak completed a restructuring of US$2.7 billion worth of debt last August, paving the way for the company’s shares, suspended since 2008, to resume trading.
The deal with 28 creditors broke the impasse that had hung over the UAE mortgage market since the height of the global financial crisis.
Amlak was an immediate casualty of the credit crunch in 2008, when it was unable to tap global credit markets to service its mortgage business. Protracted negotiations to merge Amlak with rival mortgage lender Tamweel were finally aborted when the latter was taken over by Dubai Islamic Bank.
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