G

LOBAL Investment House, a regional asset management and investment banking firm headquartered in Kuwait with offices in major capital markets in the MENA region, announced its financial results for the 9 months ended Sept. 30, 2018 reporting a net profit of KWD4.7 million ($15.6 million) compared to KWD3.5 million ($11.6 million), revenues of KWD11.3 million ($37.4 million) and fee and commission income of KWD7.1 million ($23.4 million), representing 62% of total revenues.

Asset Management generated KWD7.3 million ($23.9 million) revenues and the Asset Under Management (AUM) stood at KWD880 million ($2.9 billion).

On the buy-side, the Private equity asset management team exited three portfolio companies and distributed around $100 million to clients investing in Global Buyout Fund and GMFA and is currently working on further exits.

The real estate asset management team expanded and diversified its real estate holdings to include Western Europe by acquiring a property in the logistics industry. The team also completed the sale of the first property acquired as part of the UK National Commercial Real Estate Program in September 2015 and let to National Air Traffic Services (NATS), achieving total return of 23.1%, internal rate of return of 10.3% of which the income element represented 9.3% per annum.

Special situations asset management entered into a specialized asset management agreement with a regional group to manage a portfolio worth $90mn.

MENA Asset Management continued to report competitive returns and its managed funds outperformed their respective benchmarks and have been amongst the top performing funds in their respective jurisdictions. The team received two recognitions by industry experts, “Best Kuwait Asset Manager” and “Best Saudi Equity Fund”. In addition, Global Al-Ma’amoun Fund was named best Kuwait equity fund over 5 and 10 years by Lipper Reuters and was amongst the best performing Kuwait equity fund during the nine-months of 2018 reporting 10.6% compared to 6.6% by the respective benchmark.

The Investment Banking team generated KWD0.44 million ($1.5 million) revenues from three M&A mandates in the financial and industrial sectors. The team is currently working on several mandates and has an interesting pipeline of M&A and advisory mandates.

On the brokerage front, Global, through its brokerage arm First Brokerage Company (Oula Wasata), made focused efforts to grow its institutional brokerage business and is well equipped to benefit from the expected increase in liquidity following the inclusion of Kuwait Bourse in the FTSE Russell Emerging Markets index in September 2018. During the nine months period, Global generated KWD1 million ($3.3 million) in revenues from the brokerage business line.

The company’s continuous efforts to control and rationalize its cost base resulted in a decline of KWD1.8 million ($5.9 million) or 22% in the operating cost base to KWD6.5 million ($21.4 million). — SG