| Kuwait eyeing investments in US after subprime crisis |
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KUWAIT : Kuwait is eyeing investments in the United States in the wake of the subprime credit crisis, particularly in financial services, the Financial Times quoted the head of the Gulf state’s investment authority as saying. “Perhaps we are at the eye of the storm now and are close to the peak of the problem,” Bader Al-Saad, head of state-run Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), told the Financial Times. The KIA invests the massive surpluses of the Middle East’s fourth-largest oil exporter. “We don’t see prices dropping much more,” Saad said in the article posted on the FT’s Web site. The subprime crisis in the United States hit a range of banks, mortgage lenders, bond insurers and home builders. With oil prices rising nearly five-fold since 2002, Gulf Arab state investment funds are looking to spend some of the windfall on global assets. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, likely the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, agreed to buy up to 4.9 percent of Citigroup Inc in November in a $7.5 billion deal. “With Citi, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority had good timing,” Saad said. |
