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etisalat, the famous telecom service provider from the UAE, has managed to stay in the top 5 companies in the Arabian Peninsula. This followed the tremendous success that it enjoyed last year by growing its capitalization in the market by an astonishing 35%. There were only three other companies listed above etisalat in the list of 500 companies. They were Saudi Telecommunications Company, Saudi Arabian petrochemicals company, Sabic and Al Rajhi Banking group.
etisalat is a company that is owned 40% by the Federal Government of UAE. Till the year 2008 it was 5th on the list. Last year it jumped to 4th place. The list revealed that etisalat had a net market capitalization of U.S $ 21.5 billion. It was listed after Sabic, which had the highest capitalization of U.S $ 66 billion. Sabic was followed by Al Rajhi whose market capitalization was U.S $ 28.5 billion. STC came in third with a market capitalization of U.S $ 23.5 billion.
UAE’s etisalat grew at an excellent rate of 34.8%. Although it wasn’t the highest even in terms of growth, a victory taken by the Arabic company, Zain which had a growth of 296% and was followed by Sabic whose growth was 60%, 35% is a pretty decent rate to grow by. The total market capitalization of these 500 companies accounted for almost 90% of the total market capitalization in the peninsula.
The growth shown by etisalat and the fact that both etisalat and Saudi Telecommunications Company are listed in the top 5 on the list for the 500 companies highest in market capitalization points towards the growth of the telecommunications industry in the Arabian Peninsula and eve in the other middle-eastern countries. etisalat confirmed this just before the release of this list by adding new marine cable routes on the international map. This helped to significantly enhance the quality access of internet streaming services such as YouTube.
