Aabar Investments posts $593m Q2 net loss

Aabar Investments, the biggest shareholder in Daimler, posted a second-quarter loss as it booked 2.25 billion dirhams ($613 million) in losses from derivative financial instruments.

Net loss was 2.18 billion dirhams ($593m) compared with a profit of 546.3 million dirhams a year earlier, the Abu Dhabi government-backed investor said in a statement to the emirate’s bourse on Tuesday.

Aabar in March paid $2.7 billion for a 9.1 percent stake in Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler, the world’s second-biggest luxury carmaker.

In July, it bought a 32 percent stake in Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Ltd. commercial space venture for $280 million.

International Petroleum Investment Co, another Abu Dhabi government-backed investor, owns 71 percent of Aabar after converting 6.68 billion dirhams of bonds it bought from the company. IPIC uses Aabar for its non-oil investments.

Aabar completed in the first quarter the purchase of the Swiss-based private banking division of American International Group Inc., now known as Falcon Private Bank.

Aabar delayed the release of its second-quarter results to the end of August because of the first-time conversion of Falcon’s accounting principles to International Financial Reporting Standards.

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