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Saudi-swiss managed fund surpasses SR 250 million assets under management
Jeddah - The Sidra-Ancile Global Structured Trade Investment Fund has recently surpassed SAR 250 million (c. USD 66 million) under management to become the world's largest Islamic Structured Trade Investment Fund. The fund that is co-managed by Saudi based Sidra Capital and Swiss based INOKS Capital has made 135 short term investmentsas to 2014 across a variety of geographiesand soft commodities.
"This is a major milestone for Sidra Capital and our partners INOKS Capital. The majority of the investors are from Saudi Arabia which shows that there is not only awareness but sufficient interest in structured trade finance in the Kingdom as an alternative to conventional investment vehicles," said Hani Baothman, CEO of Sidra Capital. "All the investments of Sidra-Ancile were without defaults. This confirms the trend that trade finance is lower risk than many other types of financing and assets. It finance structured in a proper manner has a lower risk profile than many other types of financing and assets."
Structured Trade Finance is an alternative mean of providing trade financing facility to SMEs to overcome the difficulty of obtaining financing due to their weak financial standing as per bank analysis.
Further discussing the Strategy "we believe that it greatly benefits from this risk miss-perception arbitrage" said Nabil Abdul-Massih, CEO of INOKS Capital. "The much needed growth capital it provides allows these real tangible non-speculative businesses to mature and in the process generate wealth for the investors and the invested communities. We view it as top tier to provide an investor with the comfort of a risk adverse investment because duly mitigated while generating both qualitative sustainable superior returns and quantitative pros like volatility absorption and absolute non-correlation to other assets".
"The strategy of the fund that invested across Africa, East Europe, Asia and MENA regionis to support growth in the real economy by actively providing working capital to non-speculative value added SMEs focusing on agricultural commodities, energies and metals," said Mohammad Currim Oozeer, Deputy CEO of Sidra Capital. "The Fund efficiently intervenes along the commodity value added chain by using an activist and innovative approachcoupled with Shari'ah financing structures which are tailor made based on the specific transaction needs."
Sidra-Ancile has a non-leveraged approach which aims to generate consistent coupon like returns with low volatility, making it an attractive investment that enhances diversification in sources of returns and non-correlated to other traditional asset classes as well as alternative investments.
Apart from being fully Shari'ah compliant the fund sets high ethical standards. The implementation of strict SRI/ESG investment selection criteria is an integral part of the strategy through which it seeks to generate both economical and direct responsible positive impacts.
The Sidra-Ancile has won the International Finance News Best Trade Finance Deal of the Year 2012, Best Islamic Structured Trade Finance 2013 by Asset Asian Awards and most recently the Most Innovative Deal of Year 2014 by International Finance News.
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About Sidra Capital
Licensed by the Saudi Capital Market Authority (CMA) in 2009, Sidra Capital is a Shari'ah compliant financial services company located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Sidra Capital has set its focus on Asset Management and Corporate Finance & Advisory. Sidra Capital currently manages assets worth approximately USD400 million (SR 1,6 billion) which are all invested in alternative investments while the Corporate Finance & Advisory team has completed numerous transactions across a variety of different sectors and have raised capital of around a total of SAR 800 million.
Sidra Capital's strong international strategic relationships allows them to provide the highest level of expertise and market insight to their investors in Saudi Arabia and the GCC.Ever a pioneer in the investment world, Sidra Capital has a strong track record in creating innovative and award-winning products. Sidra Capital's Ancile Global Structured Trade Finance Fund, for example, was the first of its kind in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and was honored as 'The Best Structured Islamic Trade Finance' by Triple AAA Islamic Finance Awards in 2013.
For more information please visit: www.sidracap.com
About INOKS Capital
INOKS Capital, award winning alternative investment house based in Geneva, Switzerland and regulated by FINMA and the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier ("CSSF") with unbridled investment focus in commodity structured trade finance sector.
For more information please visit www.inokscapital.com
© Press Release 2015
