Gulf Finance House (GFH), the leading Middle Eastern Islamic investment bank today announced that receipts from it’s rights issue have now passed the US$200 million mark. The news comes just days after the bank confirmed it had received approximately US$150 million from the capital raising exercise and means GFH have now met their stated target of between US$200 and US$300 million in fresh capital from the rights issue, two days before its close on Thursday 29th October.
The rights issue is a major contributor to the broader GFH capital management plan that includes the planned placement of a US$100 million dollar convertible murabaha facility with Macquarie Group and the sale of non-core assets that so far has netted US$50 million from the partial sale of Qinvest to QIB. The new capital will be deployed within a newly restructured GFH business model designed to extract maximum value from existing projects and diversify its Islamic banking offering across three dedicated banking units including Investment Management, Investment Banking and Commercial Banking.
GFH Group CEO, Ahmed Fahour commented on the announcement saying, “Over the past few weeks we’ve been humbled by the extraordinary support of our shareholders in this rights issue. To hit our target before the conclusion of the offering period underlines the faith they have in our business and the team responsible for the future prosperity of their bank. With numerous subscriptions still being processed there can be no doubting the success of this capital raising initiative. Now it is incumbent on us to fulfill our promises and build the world’s leading Islamic investment bank.”