Dr. Monzer Kahf, a prominent economist and counselor, states the following: It is permissible to buy shares at initial public offering the way described in the question; but once you are assigned such shares you cannot sell them until you (or your broker/agent) actually receive the documents of these shares physically or electronically because these documents represent the possession of the shares that represent common ownership in the privatized company. Besides, the fact that some of these companies were in the past nationalized does not negatively affect the permissibility of buying its privatized shares now.