Emirates Investment Bank to start deploying excess cash over next few weeks

Saturday, Aug 15, 2015

Dubai: Emirates Investment Bank will start redeploying cash in a phased manner over the coming weeks as they await clarity, Nadi Bargouti, managing director asset management told Gulf News.

EIB is holding 10-12 per cent in cash, compared to a normal average of below 5 per cent. They were in 20 per cent cash a few weeks ago.

“We are sitting on some cash, globally we have increased our cash allocation and from regional exposure as well,” Bargouti said, adding “we are underweight fixed income globally, so we’ve put that in cash, we are also underweight Saudi for the past several months for valuation purposes, so we are sitting on cash there.”

“We haven’t redeployed that capital into the market as yet for opportunities and more visibility. We are sitting on more cash than what we normally hold, and we don’t expect to hold it much longer, we expect to start redeploying in a phased manner over the coming weeks. We would be allocating more in the Europe, and financial services in the US,” he added.

EIB, which has $2.1 billion (Dh7.7 billion) in assets under management, invests money for foreign as well as local clients globally across different asset classes.

By Siddesh Mayenkar Staff Reporter