Azimut Group And Al Mal Capital Cross The $55 Million AUM-Mark In Joint MENA Fund As Performance Shines
Market-leading regional equities fund targets USD 250 million in assets under management (AUM)
After only 12 months since co-launching a new UCITS MENA equity fund,the strategic partnership between Azimut Group (“Azimut”) and Al Mal Capital PSC (“AMC”) is paying off in terms of both performance and AUMs.
Branded‘AZ Fund Al Mal MENA Equity’, the fund is the best performing UCITS offeringwithin the MENA hemisphere, year-to-date is down 0.02%. The S&P Pan Arab index is down 4.8%
The celebration of the fund’s first anniversary has also seen it surpass USD 55 million in AUMs, putting it well on course to achieve its target of USD 250 million.
According to Giorgio Medda, Group Co-CEO and Global Head of Asset Management at Azimut, this reflects the value of the partnership between these two firms. “AMC has a proven strategy over many years in delivering consistent returns in MENA equities relative to both peers and benchmark indices. This complements Azimut’s regional expertise and commitment to strengthening our global investment management platform.”
Naser Al Nabulsi, Vice Chairman &CEO of Al Mal Capital also added “Al Mal Capital’s strategic partnership with Azimut strengthens our distribution reach whilst also increasing our range of investment offerings to clients. Our Asset Management team has an outstanding track record and we believe now’s the time to leverage this and grow our market share within the region.
Several factors have contributed to the success, based on an investment process that is focused on targeting companies and sectors where the fund sees value over a time horizon of three to five years via strong potential growth.
“This is why we have outperformed, and why we will continue to be one of the few MENA Equities specialists that deliver long term value to our clients,” says Sherif El Haddad, AMC’s Head of Asset Management. “Our bottom-up process begins by screening for liquidity. We then look for themes we favour, or macro-economic trends, prior to picking companies we like. Within the stock selection process, we look for companies that have an edge over peers, build our assumptions, before talking to management to finalize our base, worst and best-case scenarios.”
In line with this process, the fund has positioned itself to capture trends across various sectors and themes accelerated by the pandemic.
This has included looking beyond financials, telecoms and materials sectors – which account for roughly 80% of the index across most of MENA. Further, with around 30% exposure outside the GCC, the fund can avoid any excessive downside risks that could arise from cuts in government spending amid falling oil revenue and subsequent austerity measures.
As a result, the fund is more focused on sectors under-served namely the education, healthcare, utilities, and consumer staples across the region – generally constituting a much smaller portion of MENA indices.
