• Global GCC equity funds outperform their respective benchmarks year to date
    Posted: Sunday, June 08, 2014

The equity funds managed by the GCC Asset Management team based in Kuwait recorded remarkable performance YTD May 31st 2014, outperforming their respective benchmarks.

The Global GCC Large Cap Fund, one of the company's flagship funds, has outperformed its respective benchmark reporting a return of 18.9% compared to 16.5% by the S&P GCC Custom index. Global GCC Islamic Fund, which aims to maximize returns by investing in a portfolio of companies compliant with the Islamic sharia, has reported 21.7% compared to 19.5% reported by the respective benchmark.

On the other hand, Global Al-Maamoun Fund, which was named Kuwait Equity Fund of the year for the past three consecutive years by MENAfm, also outperformed its respective benchmark recording 7.9% compared to a 5.6% return reported by the benchmark. The fund aims to grow the invested capital by investing in companies listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange. The Global Large Cap Index Fund, which invests in the largest ten listed companies in terms of Market Capitalization, reported 11.6% (Benchmark: 9.1%) and Al-Durra Islamic Fund reported 8.0% (Benchmark: 2.7%).

As in the Qatari market, Al-Beit Al-Mali Fund, which invests in listed equities on the Qatar Stock Exchange that are compatible with the Islamic Sharia, reported a distinguished performance of 40.2% since the beginning of the year.

Commenting on the remarkable performance of the funds, Bader Al-Ghanim, Senior Vice President of GCC Asset Management said, "We adopt a long term strategy that focuses on stocks with potential operational growth and good fundamentals while disregards speculative ones. Our stock selection processes along with the investment strategy didn't only result in outperforming the funds we manage their respective benchmarks year to date, but also on longer periods; the past two years, three years as well as since inception".

Al-Ghanim added, "Our future outlook to the regional capital markets remains positive. We believe that the strong GDP growth, growing domestic demand and rising government spending on infrastructure projects will drive markets upwards. The Saudi market is still the most favorable due to its demographics and the steady increase in government spending, specially the education and health care sectors. We also believe that the capital markets in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will benefit from the infrastructure projects in the pipeline for the international events to be hosted as well as the increase of liquidity expected from the inclusion of these two markets in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. On the other hand, we see investment opportunities in some of the operational companies in Kuwait and Oman."

It is worth noting that the GCC Asset Management team manages assets on behalf of its clients worth USD 1.4 billion through nine equity funds and several portfolios with different strategies.

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