Kuwait Investment Authority, which manages an estimated $400 billion in assets, said on Sunday it would keep its stake in DaimlerChrysler and expects the German carmaker to have put its troubles behind it.
The state investment arm of the world’s seventh largest oil exporter has a 7.2 % stake in DaimlerChrysler, making it the automaker’s biggest shareholder.
“We are maintaining the stake. We’re quite happy with it,” the KIA’s Executive Director Saleh al-Sagoubi told reporters.
DaimlerChrysler announced in May it would sell an 80.1 % stake in Chrysler Group to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, unwinding the 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler that never worked out as planned.
“After the problems in the past things have been turning around, looks like it is in a good form now,” Sagoubi said on the sidelines of a DaimlerChrsyler event.
Dubai International Capital, which bought a $1 billion stake in DaimlerChrysler in 2005, said in May it had sold all its shares in the automaker.
The KIA, which invests surplus oil revenue overseas, has around $400 billion in assets under management, the Institute for International Finance estimated in May.
Like other investment agencies in the Gulf Arab region, the KIA is investing more in Asia, and decided in 2005 to double its asset allocation for the region to 20 % of its portfolio.
Sagoubi said the KIA was diversifying its portfolio into eastern Europe, Australia and the Far East, where he named Russia, China and Vietnam as target markets.
“We have been doing so on a continuous basis. We have mostly been investing in equities,” he said.
KIA said in November it was considering buying stakes in Chinese financial firms and infrastructure projects in India and Pakistan as part of a push into Asia.
“We are also exploring Africa right now. We are looking at it closely, we are looking at equities to start with,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of a DaimlerChrsyler event.
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