Kuwaiti fund pins hopes on Hong Kong

Asiya Investments, a fund manager in which the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) holds a 15 per cent stake, is looking to use its new Hong Kong office to bring in investors and advise Asian companies seeking to expand in the Middle East.

Asiya - Asia in Arabic - currently operates US$450 million in assets in three funds. It plans to leverage its strong ties in China, South Korea and India with the assistance of its largest shareholder, KIA, which originally founded Kuwait China Investment Co (KCIC) as its investment vehicle in 2005 with US$280 million of permanent capital.

KCIC has now rebranded as Asiya and moved investment professionals to Hong Kong, where a 20-strong team will manage frontline decision-making and fundraising functions, with the Dubai office handling some back-office and advisory work.

Ahmad al-Hamad, Asiya's group managing director, said: "[It] intends to boost the size of institutional capital from our own money, part of our expansion plans to diversify and increase our presence in Asia."

Princeton-educated al-Hamad, who worked for Morgan Stanley in New York for two years, said Asiya aimed to invest in concepts related to rising domestic consumption, which implies a broad range of industries including real estate, financial services, infrastructure, energy and consumer goods.

The company itself may be new to the investment community in Asia, where a mix of Western and Chinese investors have established their footprints in the key markets of Hong Kong and Singapore. But KIA, the world's sixth-largest sovereign wealth fund, has been actively investing in China after being awarded a quota by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange of US$1 billion for direct investment in the country's securities market, making it one of the six investors that have been granted a quota of this size.