Abraaj Capital, Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), Bank of Palestine (BoP), Cisco and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have jointly announced the first close of the Palestine Growth Capital Fund, which will provide private equity growth capital investments and management support to high growth small and mid-cap companies (SMCs) in Palestine.
The announcement was made during an event in Ramallah attended by SMCs, the business community, investors and the media.
The fund is part of Abraaj Capital's $650 million SMC investment platform, Riyada Enterprise Development (RED).
The fund will target investments in 13-15 businesses, which are expected to achieve tremendous growth and have the potential to expand into new regional and international markets.
This will enable Palestinian SMCs across all sectors to strengthen their ongoing development, resulting in substantial job creation, innovation and long-term economic growth in Palestine.
The fund was able to achieve a strong first closure of $36 million with active support from fund partners such as PIF (co-sponsor of the fund in Palestine), BoP, Cisco, EIB, and Abraaj Capital, who constitute the anchor investors in the Fund, in addition to several other individual partners both in the region and the US.
Mohamad Mustafa, president, Palestine Investment Fund, said: "This partnership will further help SMCs to benefit from Abraaj Capital's management expertise and its regional network."
Claudio Cortese, deputy director general of operations outside of the EU at the European Investment Bank, said: "In line with FEMIP's priorities, EIB's investment in the Palestine Growth Capital Fund demonstrates the bank's continued support for SMEs in Palestine."
Tom Speechley, senior partner, Abraaj Capital said: "This has been a great synergy of vision, energy and foresight, and this partnership will further integrate Palestine into the regional private equity market through a range of benefits that can be reaped from our global SMC platform."
© Arab News 2012
