GIB UK has been awarded Bahrain Asset Manager of the Year and Regional Equities Manager of the Year as part of the Global Investor/ISF MENA Awards 2015.

Peter Carey CFA, head of equities, commented: “We are delighted to receive this award as recognition for all the team’s hard work on behalf of clients over the last 25 years. Our equity business has consistently delivered benchmark plus returns by combining passive replication strategies with the exploitation of market inefficiencies on the segregated mandates that we run.”

GIB UK has assets under management totaling $12.3 billion as at December end managed on behalf of institutional clients in asset classes that range from passive equities to actively managed EM fixed income strategies in the hedge fund space. The London-based team has been managing assets since 1978.

Mark Watts CFA, CEO of GIB UK, said: “Asset management is a key growth area for the bank and indeed will continue to be a growth area in the Saudi and GCC markets. Our brand of asset management focuses on institutions and our investment philosophy and process is aligned with what institutional investors typically seek.”

He added: “In developed markets we have consciously taken the decision to offer low cost passive strategies, preferring to focus alpha generating capabilities on less efficient areas of the market where we focus on strong risk adjusted returns with robust downside risk control.”

The awards were announced and presented at the MENA Capital Markets Summit and Awards 2015 by Global Investor/ISF, the flagship asset management and asset servicing title within Euromoney and is a subscription-based magazine with approximately 7,000 targeted readers globally.

GIB is owned by the six GCC countries. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund owns 97.2 percent of GIB. Gulf International Bank (GIB) is a pan-GCC universal bank that specializes in corporate and investment banking and has a growing retail footprint.