Arab market asset management rebounds

Data from Lipper, the fund data collator, show the scale of the hit taken by funds domiciled in the Arab world since the collapse of Lehman Brothers – but also a tentative recovery.

At the end of July last year, total assets under management in funds domiciled in the eight Arab markets monitored by Lipper, were $64bn; by the end of the year, in the middle of the worldwide financial meltdown, that figure had fallen 21 per cent to $50.4bn. But by the end of July this year assets under management had rebounded to $56.9bn. Unsurprisingly, equity funds have been particularly badly affected.

“There has been a shift in appetite towards more conservative products. I think equity products are a hard sell. But that is not necessarily the case for fixed income or products which have better liquidity,” says Giyas Gokkent, economist at National Bank of Abu Dhabi.