NEW YORK, 4 May 2003 — A Bahrain-based financial services company is launching a private equity fund to be mostly invested in rebuilding Iraq, officials at the firm said on Friday.
This is the first time a private equity fund — a pool of money contributed by rich individuals and financial institutions — has been launched with investing in Iraq as its main agenda.
The fund, expected to total around $100 million, is being launched by the firm named Amwal, which means money, in Arabic, and which was founded by Yousef Al-Essa and Mohamed Sarhan.
“The fund will invest directly in projects in Iraq and in ventures outside Iraq that would be investing in Iraq,” Sarhan told Reuters from Bahrain.
Last month British bank HSBC Holdings became the first international institution to launch a fund for the region when it closed a private equity fund totaling $118 million.
Amwal, founded two years ago, emerged from a business plan competition organized by US investment bank Morgan Stanley. It is backed by rich individuals and institutional investors including TekBanc, the venture capital arm of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and by the National Bank of Kuwait.
Al-Essa, 30, is a Harvard Business School graduate while Sarhan, a graduate from Duke School of Law, practiced corporate law in New York with White & Case.
The firm acts as the sole marketing and sales arm for online US brokerage firm Ameritrade in the Middle East and also represents IndigoMarkets, a subsidiary of NASDAQ Stock Exchange that specializes in financial services technology.
Sarhan said the firm has so far received commitments of over $50 million and hopes to close the fund in another four to six weeks.