More than two-thirds of the National Commercial Bank’s (NCB) business is already Shariah-compliant, and it plans to become a completely Islamic bank “within a reasonable time.”

The NCB statement came amid the bank’s plans to sell shares on the Saudi stock market.

The Initial Public Offering (IPO) from Sunday, making NCB the last Saudi bank to go public, is expected to be one of the largest in the world this year.

The statement says the bank’s Shariah advisory council has declared the share offer to be acceptable under Islamic law.

“After much thought and deliberations regarding the issue, the bank considers the IPO in the bank’s stock to be permissible according to Shariah,” it said in a statement.

An NCB prospectus says the bank will offer 300 million shares to the public at SR45 each, for a value of $3.6 billion, while another 200 million shares will be allocated to the state pension agency bringing the total to $6 billion (SR22.5 billion).

According to the NCB statement, the bank’s assets reached SR435 billion at the end of June this year, 67 percent of which are Islamic assets and 33 percent are traditional assets.