June 03, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 17, 1428

ABU DHABI, June 2: Abu Dhabi will showcase companies including its largest bank in London and New York this month to encourage foreign investment in the Gulf’s best performing bourse, the emirate’s exchange said on Saturday.

Eleven companies, including National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi National Energy (Taqa), the exchange’s largest energy firm, will join the marketing trip arranged by the bourse of the Middle East’s fourth-largest oil producer and HSBC Holdings Plc.

“This is the first time that the Abu Dhabi market has gone to London and New York,” Rashed al-Baloushi, the exchange's acting director general, said in a statement.

“We are seeing increasing interest in the region from investors in the West, and this roadshow will strengthen that trend.”

The companies, invited in part on the basis of allowing foreign ownership, will meet asset and pension-fund managers, including clients of HSBC, a bourse official, who asked not to be named told Reuters on Thursday. Meetings will be held on June 11-12 in London and June 14-15 in New York.

Taqa, which has not opened its shares to foreign ownership, has said it would buy $6 billion of assets in 2007, taking its investments to $20 billion, as Abu Dhabi seeks to use record oil income last year to diversify its sources of revenue.—Reuters