DP World, Dubai’s global port operator, began trading on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday as the company seeks to tap into global liquidity.
“We are broadening the availability of DP stocks, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, DP World's chairman, told CNBC.
"We are opening a new window and new platform in addition to Dubai for shareholders to trade. No new shares have been issued to coincide with the London listing.
“We don’t need to raise funds, we have very strong balance sheets, we are able to meet all our commitments and this is another platform. Especially since we have been here before as P&O this is why it had to be London over other markets. The decision is really just to allow people to trade the same as on Nasdaq Dubai,” Bin Sulayem said.
DP World bought UK-listed P&O in 2006.
Despite some concerns that global trade has peaked after several years of increases in volume, Bin Sulayem said that the numbers remained strong.
“With DP world and our terminals around the world we see good numbers and we see trade performing better, this is what happened in 2010, this is what happened in the first three months," he said.
Despite Asian exchanges increasingly gaining favor as listing venues for international companies, DP World chose London because of the company's history with the UK capital, however, he said that he would not rule out listing on other venues in the future.
“We definitely considered Hong Kong and it’s a strong market, we looked at Hong Kong and other places and we believed London is more suitable for us because we have been here before.
The decision today is London and Dubai but we wouldn’t rule out anything in the future," he said.
"There is no strategy change at all this is only so that our shareholders to trade shares easier, many companies trade only in shares listed in OECD countries and we have been missing that and that’s why we decided (on) London.” DP World is the first Dubai Company to obtain a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange.