UAE Plans to Change Companies Law

SHARJAH, 30 May 2005 — UAE Minister of Economy and Planning Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi has affirmed that she was working on changing the companies’ law in order to allow family business to go public by removing the forbidding conditions that the initial public offering (IPO) should be at least 55 percent of the total shares. “Family businesses would not go public if they are going to lose control, nor the public would want successful families to abandon their new corporate responsibilities,” she said at a global investors’ conference hosted jointly by the government of the emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah and the World Bank.