JEDDAH, 8 May 2006 — Global Investment House (Global) announced yesterday that Global Opportunistic Fund II (GOF II), the $1 billion pre-IPO (initial public offering) and IPO Fund, had received overwhelming response from regional investors in the first two weeks of its launch. The fund intends to invest in 17 different countries including India and China.

Omar M. El-Quqa, executive vice president at Global, said that the fund had received firm commitments of over $500 million and investor interest in the fund is still increasing both inside and outside the region.

The fund has been authorized and approved by the Bahrain Monetary Agency (BMA) as an investment scheme under collective investment scheme regulations.

GOF II is a five-year closed-ended fund created by an instrument dated April 15, 2006 and managed by Kuwait-based Global, the sole manager of the fund.

The custodian, registrar and transfer agent of the GOF II is HSBC (Bahrain), the auditor is KPMG (Bahrain) and the legal consultant is Trowers & Hamlins (Bahrain).

GOF II proposes to invest 60 percent of its net asset value outside the GCC, especially in high growth economies like China, India, Pakistan and Turkey. It has already made an investment of over $30 million in Reliance Petroleum Ltd. The main promoter, Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), is a Fortune 500 company with $18 billion market capitalization and currently operates the third largest refinery in the world.

The fund, in addition to Reliance Petroleum, has built up a significant number of transactions that includes opportunities in China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, India and the UAE. In addition to these transactions, there are a significant number of IPOs planned in the target countries.

China has over 80, Saudi Arabia in excess of 70 and India over 100 IPOs, which will give the fund significant opportunities to earn returns. Through its strong relationships and presence in these key markets, Global will be ideally positioned to capitalize on the opportunities. El-Quqa said Global now expects to receive the required commitments of $1 billion much earlier than the indicated closing date.

Each unit holder is required to invest an amount equal to 50 percent of their commitment on the initial closing date and the remaining 50 percent will be called after a period of 180 days or at such date as decided by the manager. No unit holder will be required to make capital contributions in excess of such investors’ commitment.

“The allocation to the fund will be on a first come first serve basis and the fund may be closing during the month of May.”

“The strong macroeconomic performance of the target countries and their respective stock markets have boosted investors’ confidence in their local markets and has increased their appetite for listed shares and new issues/IPOs. GOF II will offer institutional investors and high networth individuals the opportunity to invest in IPOs across a diverse selection of sectors in the target countries,” Fahad Al-Rahmani, assistant vice president of Global, said.

“We believe that with the improving macroeconomic factors across the selected regions, increasing initiatives by local governments on privatization matters, along with increasing opportunities in the pre-IPO and IPO market, the GOF II is an ideal alternate investment opportunity,” Al-Rahmani added.

Global is currently managing another pre-IPO/IPO fund, Global Opportunistic Fund I, with a capital of $550 million which focuses primarily on the investment opportunities in the GCC markets.

El-Quqa pointed that investors in the $550 million fund have already benefited from the impressive performance of this fund which has made capital gains of over 70 percent on the partial sale of two of its investments, thus enabling a distribution to its unit holders in less than 8 months since closing.

“The fund has already lined up several of its investments for sale in the next twelve months which are expected to yield a capital appreciation of over 150 percent and return almost half of the invested capital to the investors,” he added.

Besides the success of the earlier fund, which has existing commitments in excess of $400 million, the recent turmoil in the GCC stock markets has given more reasons for regional investors to capitalize on this opportunity to diversify their holdings across the emerging markets of Asia and North Africa.