Chinese Firms Jostle With US Peers for Sliver of Gulf Oil Riches - Bloomberg

Chinese Firms Jostle With US Peers for Sliver of Gulf Oil Riches - Bloomberg

A wave of Chinese banks, asset managers and hedge funds are ramping up in the Middle East, jostling with Wall Street firms who are making their own expansion push in a region flush with oil wealth.

Those efforts were on show in recent months, when a string of executives from China’s $1.35 trillion sovereign wealth fund made their way to the Middle East in the hope of finding a way to invest in the region.

Following a series of meetings with the region’s biggest alternative asset manager, the firms unveiled a first-of-its-kind $1 billion private equity fund and China Investment Corp. vowed to take an unusually hands-on role in scouting for deal targets.

That agreement comes at a time when Beijing’s soft-power has been on the increase in the Middle East — in recent days President Xi Jinping met Gulf leaders at a forum held in the Asian country. All that’s happening even as the US deepens its own Middle East push, while also scrutinizing growing ties between the region and China.

“The Gulf region was not always on the radar in the past decades for Chinese investors because they had really a lot of businesses going on with Europe and the US,” said China Merchants Bank International’s Chief Representative for the Middle East, Stephanie Holzhaider. The Middle East will see “big development for the next decade or two. That’s why Chinese companies are deploying with full force to set up their branches or offices to try to deepen presence in the market.” The firm recently set up an outpost in Dubai.