Gulf News - 22/5/2006

UAE shares tumbled yesterday as retail investors booked profits from a Saturday rally, ending hopes that a share buyback plan by blue chip Emaar Properties would spark an upward trend.

The benchmark Dubai Financial Market index fell 3.11 per cent to 469.85 points, dragged down by a 5.16 per cent tumble from Emaar, which closed at Dh11.95..

The benchmark index in Abu Dhabi fell 2.62 per cent to 3,423.78 points.

The struggling Dubai market, which is down 54 per cent this year, got a shot in the arm on Saturday from Emaar's announcement that it would buy back some of its own shares. But selling, which brokers said was driven by profit taking, began late in Saturday's session and continued throughout Sunday, dragging Emaar from an intraday high of 13.25 on Saturday.

"When Emaar reached Dh13 people who bought at Dh12 started selling," said Majdi Mansour, chief executive of Rasmala Financial Brokerage. "There was heavy selling at the level of Dh13."

Emaar said on Saturday it would buy back some of its own shares pending approval from the market regulator, but did not say when or how many.

Analysts have said it would likely take a little more than two weeks to complete the regulatory procedures.

Technology contract

The DFM has awarded a multi-million dollar contract to Nordic market technology supplier OMX to provide it with a new trading platform, it said in a statement yesterday.

OMX, which provides technology to six Nordic stock exchanges, will supply, customise, implement and support DFM's new trading system, the OMX X-stream, the statement added.

X-Stream is a high performance, fault tolerant exchange trading system that allows processing rates of several thousand orders per second and exceptional response times, the company claims.

Eisa Kazim, DFM's director general said in a statement that "The new fully integrated trading platform will enable DFM to take the next big leap in modernising the stock market and improving its performance."