Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Emirates, the Dubai-owned airline that may follow port operator DP World in selling shares to the public, may be valued at as much as $30 billion, President Tim Clark said.

``My assessment is fairly conservative: I would say the valuation of the group is between $20 and $30 billion,'' Clark said in a telephone interview from Dubai today. Emirates, the biggest Arab airline, has no ``definitive'' plan to sell shares in an initial public offering, he added.

Emirates may consider selling shares after DP World, also owned by the government, announced an IPO. The port operator, the fourth-largest in the world, will sell about 20 percent of its equity beginning Nov. 4 to raise at least $3.5 billion. DP World shares will list on the Dubai International Financial Exchange, which aims to attract issuers from India, Africa and Europe.

Shares in Dubai-owned companies including Emirates would offer ``excellent diversification opportunities for global investors and there will be good demand for the IPO, should that happen,'' said Fahd Iqbal, senior analyst at investment bank EFG-Hermes UAE Ltd. The listing of Dubai's ``crown jewels'' is a key step in boosting the emirate's status as a financial center, he added.

Emirates, the largest customer for Airbus SAS's A380 superjumbo airliner, started in 1985 with two leased planes and now has 110 aircraft, including freighters. It has another 112 planes on order. In the fiscal year ended in March, the airline's profit rose 25 percent to 3.1 billion dirhams ($844 million) from 2.48 billion dirhams, helped by rising passenger and cargo traffic.

Government Hands

A decision to sell Emirates shares is in the hands of the government, airline spokesman Boutros Boutros said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Air Arabia, a low-cost airline based in the United Arab Emirates, raised 2.57 billion dirhams in an IPO earlier this year that received 50 percent more bids than shares on offer. The Sharjah-based carrier, which operates a fleet of 10 leased Airbus A320s, is valued at 7.98 billion dirhams ($2.2 billion).

Initial public offerings in the six Gulf Arab countries raised $5.9 billion in the first nine months of 2007, Abu Dhabi- based private equity firm Gulf Capital said in a report this month. The 26 IPOs this year received more than six times the amount of bids than shares on offer, the report said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Massoud A. Derhally in Dubai at mderhally@bloomberg.net; Arif Sharif in Dubai at asharif2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 30, 2007 04:52 EDT