Masraf Al Rayan expects its fourth-quarter profit to exceed the third quarter and will push ahead with its expansion strategy, the bank’s chief executive said yesterday.

Adel Mustafawi said the Islamic lender was looking to grow organically and through acquisitions, focusing on the Gulf Arab region and Asia, especially in the real estate and industrial sectors where he saw “good prices”. Masraf posted a net profit of 214.14mn riyals ($58.9mn) in the third quarter, down 52% on a year ago.

Mustafawi said Qatar’s fourth-largest lender by market value would benefit in the fourth quarter from closing a $445mn advisory deal for Gulf Bridge International (GBI), which is building an undersea cable to provide high-speed connectivity between the Gulf, North Africa and Europe.

“We are still going to see balanced growth in the asset and liability side—that’s going to result in higher profitability,” Mustafawi told Reuters in an interview. “The margin has increased with us which helps us achieve good profit in the next few months.”

Fuelled by an almost four-fold rise in oil prices since 2002, lenders in the Gulf Arab region have also being expanding overseas as they face increasing saturation in home markets. “We have to maintain our strategy to grow beyond Qatar and that’s going to happen through acquisitions and growth,” Mustafawi said.

The bank, which will increase its branch network at home to 12 in 2010 from five, sees expansion through its core banking business and investments in the industrial and property sectors in the Arab World and Asia.

The lender, which said in 2008 it wanted a representative office in Libya, is hoping to open the office in the North African Opec oil exporter early next year, although acquiring a full banking licence was difficult for an Islamic bank.

The bank is arranging an Islamic bond sale for the first quarter of next year. “We are finalising this issue, to be a lead arranger for a regional sukuk issuer for $300-$500mn,” he said.