Global awarded ‘Best Kuwait Asset Manager’ by MENA Fund Manager – Firm wins ‘Best Saudi Equity Fund’ award
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KUWAIT CITY, Jan 31: Global Investment House (Global), a regional Asset Management and Investment Banking firm headquartered in Kuwait with offices in major capital markets in the MENA region, was awarded “Best Asset Manager in Kuwait” and “Best Saudi Equity Fund” by the “MENA Fund Managers Performance Awards”.
The awards were presented in an event held on Tuesday 30 January 2018 in Dubai and attended by professionals from the regional investment and asset management industry. Bader Al-Ghanim, Executive Vice -President and Head of MENA Asset Management at Global received the awards.
The MENA Asset Management team was named “Best Kuwait Asset Manager”, thanks to the consistent performance of the managed funds and portfolios as a result of the long-term strategy adopted that focuses on stocks with potential operational growth and good fundamentals while disregards speculative ones.
On the other hand, Global Saudi Equity Fund, the second largest fund in the Kingdom with assets under management of SAR 502 million (USD 134 million), was named “Best Saudi Equity Fund”. The fund has outperformed the respective benchmark Tadawul All Shares Index (“TASI”) reporting 120.8% since inception (TASI: 50.9%) and 5.8% in 2017 (TASI: 0.2%).
Al-Ghanim said, “We are delighted that MENA Fund Manager recognized our achieved and consistent performance on various products. We were able to accomplish these results by consistently placing our clients’ interests at the forefront and continuously seeking to offer optimum quality products and services.”
“Our stock selection processes along with the investment strategy didn’t only result in outperforming the funds we manage their respective benchmarks last year, but also on longer periods; the past two years, three years as well as since inception,” he added.
Last December, the asset management team at Global issued their outlook on the GCC equity markets for the year 2018 with a generally optimistic view ranging from slightly negative to moderately bullish across the board supported by more accommodative fiscal policies and reasonable valuations.
The teams’ outlook on Kuwait was upgraded from neutral last year to positive for 2018. Although Kuwait lacks any strong themes, the market can deliver positive returns driven by a sustained government spending, strong fiscal position due to lower breakeven oil prices, reasonable valuations (for selective large and mid-cap companies) and potential FTSE flows following the upgrade in September 2017.
While the team was neutral to slightly positive on Saudi in 2017, it turned more bullish on the kingdom for 2018 on the back of expansionary budget – underpinned by higher oil and non-oil revenues – and potential index inclusion by FTSE and MSCI.
Al-Ghanim concluded by thanking the MENA asset management teams in Kuwait and Saudi for their efforts and hard work which have achieved very positive results, with all managed funds outperforming their respective benchmarks.
It is worth noting that over a 3 years and 5 years window, the Fund performance was -7.2% and 37.5% respectively compared to -13.3% and 6.3% respectively for TASI (The benchmark returns do not reflect dividends for the respective periods).
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