(MENAFN- The Peninsula) By Satish Kanady / The Peninsula
The London-listed Qatar Investment Fund (QIF) has announced its intention to make a shift from the current a largely Qatar-focused investment strategy to a broader GCC investment approach. The Fund also announced plans to change its name.
Currently, the investment policy enables the company to invest up to 15 percent of the QIF in GCC countries (namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Oman and Bahrain) other than Qatar.
The proposed change in investment policy will remove the 15 percent limit and enable the company to increase its investment allocation to other GCC countries and provide the Investment Adviser with a wider investment universe and more flexibility to identify attractive opportunities in the GCC region, according to a decision by the QIF Board of Directors meeting.
Alongside the amended investment policy the Board has resolved to put forward a number of proposals including making a tender offer for up to 10 percent of the issued share capital of the company (excluding treasury shares); cancelling the discontinuation vote currently scheduled for the 2018 annual general meeting and replacing it with a continuation vote for the 2021 annual general meeting and every three years thereafter; and making a tender offer to shareholders for up to 100 percent of the company's share capital in 2020 subject to Shareholder approval to be sought in 2020; and proposing to change the name of the company to Gulf Investment Fund PLC.
All of these changes will be subject to the approval of the company's shareholders at an Extraordinary General Meeting, other than the tender offer in 2020 which will be subject to shareholder approval in 2020, QIF announced in a posting on its official website yesterday.
QIF is a closed-ended investment company which was incorporated in the Isle of Man in 2007.
The company was established to invest primarily in quoted Qatari equities. The company's investment objective is to capture, principally through the medium of the Qatar Exchange, the opportunities for growth offered by the expanding Qatari economy by investing in listed companies or companies soon to be listed.
According to QIF statement, the Board has been in discussions with the Investment Adviser since March 2017 regarding the investment strategy of the company.
The Board is mindful that the existing investment policy, whilst allowing for some investment in GCC countries other than Qatar, is principally a single country focussed policy and the Board is conscious of the risk to the company from having a principally single country focus.
The Board and the Investment Adviser believe that there is currently an opportunity for growth offered by gaining further exposure to companies listed on other GCC exchanges.
The proposed change to the investment policy will remove the 15 percent limit referred to above and thereby enable the company to increase its investment allocation to other GCC countries.
It is further proposed that the company will also be permitted to invest in companies listed on stock markets not located in the GCC which will have a significant economic exposure to and/or derive a significant amount of their revenues from GCC countries.
The amended investment policy will widen the investment universe for the Investment Adviser and provide more flexibility for the company to invest in companies listed on the GCC stock exchanges.
The new policy will retain the same restrictions that are in the existing investment policy, including that: no single investment position in a S & P GCC Composite Index constituent may, exceed the greater of 15 percent of the NAV of the company; or 125 percent of the constituent company's index capitalisation divided by the index capitalisation of the S & P GCC Composite Index.
The Board believes that the amended investment policy could improve the marketability of the company as there are a limited number of other GCC focused investment companies that are listed on a recognised stock market
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