Emaar hires Morgan Stanley for listing

Emaar Properties, developer of the world’s tallest tower, hired Morgan Stanley to advise on the sale of a 25 percent stake in its shopping malls and retail business after revenue at the unit surged.

The company is also considering appointing a local bank as additional adviser on the secondary offering, Chairman Mohamed Alabbar said today in an interview in Dubai. Emaar is seeking to complete the deal by mid-June and plans to sell the shares on Nasdaq Dubai and in London, Alabbar said in a separate interview earlier with Bloomberg Television.

Emaar plans to raise between 8 billion dirhams ($2.18 billion) to 9 billion dirhams from the secondary public offering, which will primarily be used pay a dividend to shareholders, the company said March 15. The Dubai government is Emaar’s largest shareholder, with a stake of almost 30 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Emaar is benefiting from a tourism and retail boom in Dubai that’s driving up visitor numbers at its largest malls and boosting sales. The malls and retail business posted a 20 percent increase in revenue to 2.84 billion dirhams in 2013, while the Dubai Mall received 75 million shoppers last year.

Morgan Stanley  expects to see two to three billion dollar-plus IPOs from the Gulf region in the second-half of the year, former Middle East and North Africa investment bank head Klaus Froehlich said in an interview in Dubai on Feb. 10.

A spokesman for the U.S. bank declined to comment on its role in the Emaar unit offering.-Bloomberg