Private and public partnership "is the ideal way to achieve an effective and sustainable development" in Kuwait, Diraar Al Ghanim, chairman & managing director of Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz), said Sunday on releasing the investment bank's earnings in the first half of this year. "We believe that the development plan, which is achieving a steady progress, can positively stimulate Kuwait stock exchange based on solid fundamentals, as did the current tenders of the two new projects Al Zoor water and energy plant and Kuwait Health Insurance Company," he said. Markaz, one of the Middle East's leading investment banking and asset management companies, posted a net profit of KD750,000 and a 2 fils EPS in H1 2011 compared to KD1.44 million and a 3 fils EPS for the same period of 2010. Notwithstanding the political events in the region, there has been a strong appetite from regional and foreign financial institution to acquire distressed debt, and few transactions have taken place. This was encouraging as it provided the market with benchmarks to price credit default, and helped banks and creditors to agree on realistic debt restructuring plans. Short-term debt is KD5.02 million where as total debt is KD32.51 million representing 5.6 percent and 36.6 percent respectively of total equity. The total equity grew by 7 percent compared to the same period of 2010 and accounted to KD 89.79 million. Markaz assets under management for H1 2011 is KD906 million. Commenting on the results, Al Ghanim said "markets performed well in the beginning of Q2 but market volatility continued due to US debt struggle, Europe's sovereign debt crisis and the fall of oil prices affected the region's markets and had a severe negative sentiment on investors. Although regional countries generally are surplus countries and not shortage countries, the big challenge for decision makers in Kuwait and the Gulf is to channel these surpluses to development projects that will help the region's population and create new investment opportunities." Manaf Alhajeri – CEO at Markaz, said "concentrating on the fundamentals of corporate governance, risk management and the commitment to ensure a safe financial management practices enabled Markaz to weather and overcome markets' cycles. Over a period of time, these fundamentals have remained the core of Markaz corporate culture and investment approach." Alhajeri added that "the nature of market conditions in present times and the fast changing variables require quick actions to provide a highly dynamic investment solutions with the flexibility to move between various asset classes to cater to investors' demands. We have recently sensed a change in investors' appetite toward highly transparent and low risk investment tools that will generate more returns than bank deposits."
