Dubai considers approaches for DIFX bourse stake

DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai is exploring approaches it has had from around six parties interested in taking a stake in the Dubai International Financial Exchange, the governor of the emirate's financial services investment zone said on Tuesday.

Dubai was not actively seeking to sell a stake in the exchange, set up in 2005 to encourage foreign companies to raise capital in the world's top oil exporting region, said Omar bin Sulaiman, governor of the Dubai International Financial Center, which owns the DIFX.

"We are talking to them, trying to explore the strategy," he told the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit in Dubai.

Two or three of the approaches were "very interesting", said bin Sulaiman, who heads the DIFC, a dollar-based financial services hub with its own regulator.

The approaches had come from parties in the exchanges business and from banks and investment houses, he said.

"Two of the serious ones are Western," he said, declining to identify the parties.

DIFC, which trumpeted the launch of the exchange in 2005 as the birth of the Arab Hong Kong, owns around 3.5 percent of pan-European exchange operator Euronext ENXT.PA.