RIYADH – Global Investment House Saudi (Global Saudi), a subsidiary of the regional asset management and investment banking firm Global Investment House (Global), announced Tuesday that the Global Saudi Equity Fund has reported another successful year in 2018. It was ranked amongst the top 5 best performing conventional equity funds in the Saudi market with assets under management of SR569 million ($152 million).

In 2018 and for the second consecutive year, Global Saudi Equity Fund ranked amongst the 5 best performing conventional funds and 10 best performing equity funds in a universe of 90 Shariah and conventional funds in the Saudi market. The fund has outperformed the respective benchmark Tadawul All Shares Index (TASI) by 92% since inception (Fund 155.5% vs TASI 63.4%) and 7.4% in 2018 (Fund 15.7% vs TASI 8.3%).

Bader Al-Ghanim, Acting CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Global Saudi, said: “The fund’s robust performance is attributable to the team’s research driven investment approach and vast experience in managing equities in the Saudi market. Our value-oriented investment process has proven to be successful.”

Last December, the asset management team at Global issued their outlook on the GCC equity markets for the year 2019 with a mixed view due to the impact of weaker oil price restricting the fiscal space but supported by passive flows in Saudi and Kuwait.

Husain Thaker, Assistant Vice President and fund manager at Global Saudi, said: “We were positive on the Saudi market for 2018 backed by an expansionary budget propelled by higher oil prices, rising non-oil revenues and potential inclusion by index trackers namely MSCI and FTSE.”

Al-Ghanim noted: “We expect Tadawul to lead GCC markets supported by potential inclusion by FTSE and MSCI in their respective emerging market indices. Given the current global economic backdrop, interest rate cycle and volatility in oil prices, we expect financials to be potential outperformers.”

Over a 3-year and 5-year window, the Fund performance was 20.2% and 22.3% respectively compared to 13.2% and -8.3% respectively for TASI (The benchmark returns do not reflect dividends for the respective periods). — SG