KUWAIT, 30 May 2008 — Kuwait’s Global Investment House and partners are looking to raise $600 million by selling shares in a Saudi real estate firm, stock that they might then list, Global’s managing director said yesterday. “We are planning to launch a real estate company that invests in Saudi Arabia, and that would be in the range of $600 million,” Maha Ghunaim told Reuters in an interview in Kuwait.
Global, Kuwait’s biggest investment bank by market value, would start selling the shares from next month in a private placement, and could list the stock in Riyadh or Kuwait in about three years, Ghunaim said.
Global would keep as much as 20 percent of the company, she said. “It’s a development company ... we will try to do a dual (listing) in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait,” she said.
Global, which buys into companies and sells them through funds, wants to focus its foreign expansion on the Gulf, Ghunaim said, after raising $1.15 billion through selling global depositary receipts (GDRs) in London this month.
Operations of its Saudi unit, Global Saudi, should start before October, she said. “The Gulf is extremely wealthy and it supports my asset management business,” Ghunaim said. Global operates in Bahrain and has a financial services license in Qatar.
Global owns 15.4 percent of Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait. It failed in February to become BBK’s biggest shareholder after losing out to Ithmaar Bank in an auction.
Global is also looking to set up an investment bank in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates capital, with local firm Al-Qudra Holding, Ghunaim said, declining to be more specific.
The investment bank this week said it bought 70 percent of Kuwait’s First Securities Brokerage Co for about 20 million dinars ($75.36 million) to boost its brokerage business.
It is expanding as part of a strategy to boost the assets it manages to at least $12 billion by 2010 from $9.3 billion at the end of March, Ghunaim said.
