Bahrain's Investcorp bullish about growth prospects in GCC

11/03/2018 08:28 AST

Bahrain-based alternative investment firm Investcorp is bullish about growth prospects in the region as the governments undertake privatisation measures to boost economy and create more jobs.

"This region like any emerging market has ups and downs but we are quite bullish about opportunities to invest especially in infrastructure, health care and education sectors. We are a long-term investor and we believe that macroeconomic conditions would be favourable for investment," said Walid Majdalani, Co-Head of Corporate Investment for Mena (Middle East, North Africa) at Investcorp speaking to Gulf News in an interview. Alternative invests are other than stocks, bonds and currencies.

The company would be focusing across GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), Mena and Turkey region but Saudi Arabia, UAE will be the important markets for growth.

"Those [Saudi, UAE] economies are growing, perhaps lower than the previous year and each of these governments have announced quite ambitious budgets and quite ambitious projects which we tend to look into for opportunities." "2017 was a tough year and 2018 looks potentially difficult moving forward but there is no doubt that there is an improvement in the overall economic conditions in this part of the world with privatisation initiatives."

UAE and Saudi Arabia, the two big economies in the region are investing heavily in building infrastructure, creating free zones, developing leisure and tourism to boost growth as low oil prices hurt their economies.

Business industrial zone

Saudi Arabia recently announced a half-a-trillion dollars plan to build a business and industrial zone that links with Jordan and Egypt, the biggest effort yet to free the kingdom from dependence on oil exports.

"We believe Saudi Arabia is a big market for us and it will continue to be the case going forward. We made 15 investments to date in GCC, wider Mena and Turkey and seven of those are in Saudi Arabia," he said adding that they deployed close to $1.6 billion in GCC, wider Mena and Turkey. On the UAE, he said there are significant opportunities in the health care sector especially in hospitals, distribution, retail and technology. When asked about the expansion plans, he said the firm recently opened an office in Singapore and is looking to grow further with new opportunities coming their way.

"We doubled our asset management over the past couple of years. We acquired credit management platform with offices in Asia, and that will be helpful for us to get the business from Asia to the region and vice versa."

Divesting

The company also has plans to divest its investments when those investments attain maturity. "Like any alternative asset manager, we invest in companies and as these companies reach their maturity level, we are in the process of divesting them. In our portfolio here in this region, out of 15 investments, we have exited one, listed another and partially exited another one."

Since its inception in 1982, Investcorp has made over 175 corporate investments in the US, Europe and the Middle East and North Africa region, including Turkey, across a range of sectors including retail and consumer products, technology, business services and industrials. It was also involved in than 500 commercial and residential real estate investments in the US and Europe, for in excess of $56 billion (Dh205.5 billion) in transaction value.

Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company has a 20 per cent stake in the firm.

Gulf News