A new wave of family-owned businesses is reshaping Morocco’s financial landscape as they increasingly turn to the Casablanca Stock Exchange to secure growth and ensure succession.
The latest example is SGTM, a heavyweight in Morocco’s construction sector, which is preparing a landmark initial public offering (IPO) scheduled for December 16, Jeune Afrique reported in a detailed analysis.
SGTM plans to sell 20% of its capital for 5.04 billion dirhams, making this the second-largest IPO in the history of the Casablanca market, after Maroc Telecom.
The group, controlled by the Kabbaj family, had long resisted opening its capital to the public, a hesitation shared by many Moroccan family businesses.
This shift reflects “the end of a cycle,” a Moroccan businessman told Jeune Afrique, explaining that “the generation of entrepreneurs who have led these companies for decades now needs to pass the torch, and the stock market is a tool for transmission.”
The trend is not limited to SGTM. Earlier this year, Cash Plus, owned by the Amar and Tazi families (also behind Richbond), raised 750 million dirhams through a mix of capital increase and share sale.
These moves signal a cultural transformation among Moroccan family firms, which historically preferred private ownership over public markets.
A Casablanca Stock Exchange official, quoted by Jeune Afrique, recalls that the market was once seen as “reserved for financial institutions or sophisticated issuers little known to the public.” Today, she says, efforts have been made to “place the stock market at the heart of Morocco’s economic ecosystem.”
The IPO boom comes after years of stagnation. The 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted activity, with transaction volumes dropping to 57 billion dirhams in 2020, compared to 98.7 billion four years later. Under the leadership of Tarik Senhaji, now head of the Moroccan Capital Markets Authority (AMMC), the market has regained momentum, Jeune Afrique writes.
Recent IPOs include CFG Bank, oversubscribed 35 times by more than 23,000 investors; irrigation leader CMGP; private healthcare giant Akdital; and TGCC, SGTM’s competitor. TGCC’s 2021 IPO, subscribed 22 times by 12,000 investors, remains “a strong signal to the market,” according to the magazine.
]Despite the momentum, Morocco’s New Development Model goal of reaching 300 listed companies by 2035 remains challenging. With only 77 listed firms and one to two IPOs per year, the market would need to attract 20 new listings annually, a pace far behind Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh exchange, which recorded over 80 IPOs in 2024, Jeune Afrique points out.
