The Dallah Albaraka group is planning to sell half of its interest in one of its subsidiaries, Al-Amin Company for Securities & Investment Funds, in a private placement worth around $30 million. The company has also applied for a listing on the Bahrain Stock Exchange.

Al-Amin is part of the Albaraka Investment & Development Company (ABID), the financial holding company of Jeddah-based Dallah Albaraka. Founded in 1987, Al-Amin made net profits of $6.8 million in the year to February 1997, when its assets stood at $268.4 million. Al-Amin's main activity is investing in Islamic transactions, then securitising them for sale to Muslim investors. The Dallah Albaraka group has total assets of $6,000 million.

'Now that Al-Amin has completed its structures, deepened its sharia roots and has become known and profitable...I am pleased to announce that its ownership is no longer closed to only myself and the Dallah Albaraka Group,' the group's founder and chairman, Saleh Kamel, told an Islamic banking conference in Bahrain on 8 December. 'We shall open the company for ownership by governments, financial institutions and individuals.'

The private placement, which is expected to take place in the first half of next year, is for half of the company's share capital of

$60 million. The book value of the shares is about $74 million. Al-Amin general manager Hasan al-Amari says that non-Muslim investors will also be able to buy shares and investors will be brought in from outside the Gulf to the extent that Bahraini regulators permit. The management of the company will remain in the hands of Dallah Albaraka after the placement.