Global Investment House

Global Investment House (Global): is a full-fledged investment company incorporated in 1998, and falls under the regulation of the Central Bank of Kuwait.

Its underlying foundation is to meet the high expectations of local and international clients, and to enhance the investment service industry and the capital market in Kuwait and the region.

Today, Global stock lists on the Kuwait, Bahrain, and Dubai Stock Exchanges, with branches and affiliates in Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi (UAE), Jordan, Qatar, and Sudan.

Global plays an important role in promoting investment opportunities in the Persian Gulf Peninsula to investors through expert financial engineering, in-depth research and reports to advance the capital market in the region.

Global’s achievements have been recognized on local, regional, and international levels. The company’s current assets under management reached KD2.35 billion (USD8.4 billion) as at 30 September 2007.

For the third consecutive year, Euromoney magazine awarded Global this year’s Award for Excellence as the “Best Investment Bank in Kuwait 2007”.

During the past year, Global was very active on various fronts. It had introduced several new funds during year among them are Asia Real Estate Fund, a Shari’a compliant fund, the Palestine Dedicated Fund, the first of its kind in the region. The company’s funds have continued to record competitive returns as the Global Ten Large Cap. Fund. Subsequently, it was ranked best performing equity fund in the Kuwaiti market in 2006 by Lipper-Reuters.

In addition, Global Distressed Fund was ranked by EurekaHedge as the 2nd best fund in the world in terms of Sharpe Ratio, then as the 4th best hedge fund for January 2007 by Barclay Group, up from 7th place in March 2005. The Global Umbrella Fund – Europe was also ranked byEurekaHedge as the 3rd best performing hedge fund in Europe for the month of March and the 4th for the first quarter of 2007.

In 2006, the company was successful in privately placing around KD240 million (USD830 million) for five companies, and it was the Lead Manager for the United Towers Co. issue, in a transaction worth KD45 million (USD156 million).

Global acted as Co-Lead Manager and/or Underwriter in several regional and international deals worth USD996 million.

On the M&A front, the Investment Banking Group acted as advisor to Al-Soor Financing & Leasing Company in the full acquisition of Al Mulla International Financing & Investment Co.

Furthermore, the total size of Murbaha financing arrangements done by Global amounted to KD115 million in 2006 (USD385 million).

A recent study by the international rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) report placed Global among the best 19 listed companies on Kuwait Stock Exchange. The S&P/IFCG Extended Frontier 150 is comprised of the largest and most liquid stocks from a pool of over 30 emerging and frontier markets that are currently not included in the S&P/IFCI (Investable) Index.