Gulf investors bargain hunting in troubled US economy

Rather than pack up and leave the US fearing recession, banking and corporate leaders in Davos were looking for bargains in the US financial sector, battered by the credit crisis.

Policymakers, managers of burgeoning state-run investment funds and heads of major investment banks at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum said the US was the best place to be at a time of a global slowdown.

This is because the rest of the world is likely to suffer a sharper downturn than the world's largest economy.

"This is a pure investment opportunity," said Bader Al Sa'ad who runs Kuwait's $200 billion-plus sovereign wealth fund (SWF).

His Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), which spent $5 billion in buying stakes in troubled US banks Merrill Lynch and Citigroup this month, is looking at the US financial and real estate sectors - which have been the epicentre of the crisis.

"This opportunity doesn't come along every day," Al Sa'ad told reporters.

Bert Heemskerk, chief executive of the Netherlands' Rabobank, said brave investors will put money into banks after some stocks halved in value in the recent sell-off.

"You might need a strong stomach for it but I'm pretty sure that the prices are hovering near the bottom of what they should be," Heemskerk said.

The crisis has also attracted Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of Dubai World which has a $20 billion portfolio of real estate outside Dubai, to the world's biggest economy.

"We are buying in the US... Somebody's problem is somebody's profit. Something you want to buy, you can buy cheaper now. The US is a very strong market," bin Sulayem said.

But some Gulf investors were more keen to focus on their home region.

Abdul-Aziz Abdulla Al-Ghurair, chief executive of Mashreqbank, Dubai's second-largest lender by market value, is eyeing Arab markets including Egypt.

"This year Egypt is on our radar... [America is] too huge," he said.

Elsewhere, investors are looking to turn the growing fight against climate change into a money-spinner.

Andrei Marcu, head of the International Emissions Trading Association, an independent body that develops trading in greenhouse-gas emissions, said there was a doubling of carbon funds investment in 2007 from 2006.

Investors poured $5 to $7 billion last year into specialised funds which invest in efficiency improvements in power stations and other installations in developing countries to sell those credits to European industries required to offset emissions.

"People say there is a wall of money coming at us and this is a business of the future, a strategic business that you have to be in," Marcu said.

"It is not only the large energy companies and the large financial institutions in New York and in London but you are also starting to see money coming in from private banks and the sovereign funds." (Reuters)

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