Jeddah: Jeddah-based Islamic investment firm Sedco Capital has launched the first fund managed by its own in-house team, looking to bulk up its asset management capabilities, the firm said yesterday.
The Gulf equities fund, domiciled in Luxembourg, has an initial $30m in assets and is Sedco’s 14th fund overall.
It is part of Sedco’s strategy to source two-thirds of its
assets under management from outside Saudi Arabia in four to five years.
“With more and more people looking at Mena and with interest in Shariah investment growing all the time, we expect this fund’s value to reach $100m in the short term,” said Yazan Abdeen, lead fund manager at Sedco.
Previously, Sedco relied on external advisers for its funds. Last year, it launched an Islamic fixed income fund with an initial $100m alongside an Islamic global equity fund with $150million, both using Credit Suisse as investment manager.
Sedco Capital, a fully owned subsidiary of Sedco Holding, said it had also signed the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI), becoming the first
Gulf-based Islamic asset manager to do so.
Sedco Capital, which manages and advises $3.6bn of assets, last year incorporated environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles into two of its equity funds.
This allowed the funds to be marketed to investors beyond the traditional Islamic finance centres in the Middle East and southeast Asia.
There are 1,285 signatories to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment, most of them based in the United States and Europe, with London-based Arabesque the only other Islamic asset manager on the list.
Reuters
