K&A acted as counsel to the financial advisors, bookrunners, underwriters and lead manager on the dual and concurrent IPO and listing of Americana Restaurants PLC on the main market of the Saudi Exchange in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange in the United Arab Emirates.

‍

Americana Restaurants is the largest and most popular out-of-home dining and quick service restaurant operator in its 12 countries of operation across MENA and Kazakhstan by number of restaurants. It is a franchisee in MENA and Kazakhstan for KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee's, Krispy Kreme, TGIF, Costa Coffee, Peet’s Coffee and Baskin Robbins, and the leading restaurant platform in its region with a restaurant footprint exceeding that of the next four largest players combined in 2021.

‍

This transaction is the “first-of-its-kind” in Saudi Arabia and bolsters K&A’s track-record of such capital markets transactions, including Petro Rabigh’s USD 2.12 billion rights issue and the Saudi Real Estate Company (Al-Akaria)’s USD 423 million rights issue.

‍

The K&A team was led by Managing Partner Zeyad Khoshaim with support from the capital markets and corporate teams.

‍

This transaction comes on the back of K&A’s recognition as the only independent Saudi Arabian law firm to be ranked as Tier 1 by IFLR 1000 for all practice areas including capital markets.