Baku, Azerbaijan, March 9
By Anvar Mammadov – Trend:
Azerbaijan's banking sector enjoys more potential for holding an initial public offering (IPO) than other areas, expert on capital markets Jafar Ibrahimli told Trend on March 9.
He said that today any of Azerbaijani banks can resort to the IPO.
"Azerbaijan's banking sector is a few steps ahead of the rest of the country's economy. Today, any Azerbaijani bank could conduct an IPO, and I believe that this step would be very successful. Just, their financial performance needs to be at a level that would attract foreign investors," Ibrahimli noted.
To date, Unibank has announced about its intention to conduct IPO. Then, Chairman of the Board of Unibank Faig Huseynov told reporters that this step is a strategic task for the bank. He noted that for this it is necessary to strengthen financial indicators and keep them at a stable high level for a certain period of time.
IPO is the process by which a private company can go public by sale of its stocks to general public. The sale of shares may be carried out either by placing an additional issue of shares during an open subscription, or by publicly selling the shares of an existing issue.