By Rebecca Spong, MEED
Growth driven by Islamic finance and rising prominence of
Qatar
Qatari investment bank QInvest is forecasting strong
growth in 2014 fuelled by demand for Islamic finance and
international investors keen to access liquidity in the
region.
“We do a lot of work acting as a gateway into the region,
working for companies looking to access Qatar and tap
pools of liquidity here,” Michael Katounas, head of
investment banking at QInvest tells MEED on the sidelines
of the Euromoney Qatar conference.
“We see a lot of demand in Islamic finance, as well. The
whole Islamic finance space is moving to a new level.”
The bank is also targeting mid-market companies in non-GCC
regions, a market that other financiers are not focusing
on or have reduced their exposure to.
“There is quite a lot of demand from Europe in the
midmarket space,” he says. “Providers of finance are
taking a step back and many international banks are
pulling out of the region. But you cannot replicate our
on-the-ground access to local investors in London”.
The bank has been very active in Islamic finance during
2013, working on a $1.25bn sovereign sukuk for the
government of Turkey as well as Qatari telecoms firm
Ooredoo’s first $1.25bn sukuk (Islamic bond) issuance,
which closed in early December.
Katounas expects a strong pipeline for Islamic finance
deals in 2014, and not just focused on sukuk.
“There will be a lot of activity in Islamic finance
market, definitely in the sukuk space but also outside the
sukuk market. There is quite a lot of innovation, we are
putting together hybrid structures,” he says.
QInvest recently launched a new strategy for the bank in
October, cutting some lines of business and focusing on
three core areas; investment banking, principal
investments and asset management.
It is a strategy that has worked well so far, says
Katounas. “We are happy with how 2013 went. We deployed
$300m of our own capital and seen quite a lot of
high-profile deals. We are scaling that up and aiming to
deploy another $300m roughly in 2014.”
Click here