Dubai World, the troubled state-owned conglomerate, faces a delay to its plans to try to boost the value of one of its biggest assets after DP World, the container terminal operator, announced it was postponing a long-awaited London listing until at least early next year.
DP World had hoped the dual listing - alongside the company's existing listing on Dubai's Nasdaq Dubai exchange - would help lift a share price that has languished since shortly after the company carried out the Middle East's biggest initial public offering in November 2007 at $1.30 per share.
The planned London listing, announced in January, was expected to give Dubai World, which is struggling to restructure $23.5bn of debt, an opportunity to sell more of the 80 per cent of DP World it still owns.
That now looks unlikely until after DP World lists in London. The earliest opportunity for that is likely to be when it announces its full-year 2010 results in about March next year.
DP World believes the lack of investor interest in Dubai's financial exchanges has hit the market's estimate of its value. Its shares fell 2 per cent on Monday to to $0.46, valuing DP World at about $7.64bn, compared with $21.6bn at the time of the IPO.
DP World blamed postponement of the London listing on technical problems related to the merger of Nasdaq Dubai, where DP World trades, and Dubai Financial Market. The challenges of merging the two trading systems make it currently impossible to create an instrument for trading DP World's shares that would be completely interchangeable between London and Dubai.
Sir John Parker, vice-chairman of DP World, said there had been repeated discussions with DFM and Nasdaq Dubai about creating a common trading platform that would allow DP World's shares also to trade in London, but there had been repeated delays.
"Time just has kept slipping away," he said. "Our confidence level obviously has to be rebuilt as to when this will be ready."
Nasdaq Dubai said on Monday that a joint trading platform would be available from mid-July.
DP World said it remained committed to seeking a listing in London.
While the world's fourth-largest container terminal operator, DP World has had the widest geographical spread of any of the large international operators since taking over the international operations of CSX World Terminals in 2005 and buying the UK's P&O group in 2006.
The company, whose biggest facility is Dubai's huge Jebel Ali port, remained profitable throughout both last year's container shipping downturn and Dubai's debt crisis.