Manama: Investcorp, in the past five years, has paid back $5.8 billion to its shareholders from the successful, profitable realizations of investments, according to a senior official at the firm.
“We have raised $7 billion in new funds for our products combined from investors globally over these five years. And $2.5 billion of the $7 billion raised has been invested by Gulf based clients in deal-by-deal offerings with the remaining $4.5 billion being allocated to hedge funds,” Rishi Kapoor, Chief Financial Officer Investcorp told media during the post ordinary general meeting (AGM) Press briefing on Monday.
Kapoor highlighting the salient features of five year of success since the global financial markets hit by the crisis said that past five years was a clear evidence of Investcorop’s sustained success patterns.
“Apart from paying back $5.8 billion to our shareholders Investcorp has invested $2.9 billion in new deals across three continents. Our deals have been in multiple sectors and asset classes to diversify risk and optimise return potential for our clients. From a balance sheet perspective, our capital adequacy ratio is 30%; our leverage has come down by 62%; we have no debt maturities for the next three years and our existing cash position almost fully covers the next five years’ of debt maturities,” he said.
“The strategy has yielded into a sustained recovery in profitability for the Firm, with five consecutive years of profits which have generated an average ROE of 11.4% during this 5 year period: a market leading rate of return on our equity. Additionally, we have generated cumulative EPS of $401per share and 64% growth in our book value over the 5 year period,” he added.
According to Kapoor, Investcorp’s full year 2014 marked the end of five years since the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Over the past five years, Investcorp’s four key priorities includes managing clients’ investment portfolio to grow and realize optimal value.
“Investing in Gulf franchise stems out from the strategy aimed at providing a gold standard service to Investcorp’s clients and meeting their needs. To this end, we have opened new offices in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and we expect to be opening an office in Doha soon. We have also invested in our resources and we have almost doubled the number of relationship managers across all our Gulf markets,” he explained.
Talking about the expanding Firm’s product capabilities so it can provide unique investment opportunities which cater to our clients’ evolving risk-reward appetite he said Investcorp has supplemented its traditional deal-by-deal corporate investment buyout product offering in the US and Europe.
Additional products include investment opportunities in high-growth technology focused companies; growth investment opportunities in the GCC and Turkey; and special opportunity portfolios focusing on key recovery themes across multiple asset classes in the US and the EU.
“Investcorp has a solid and well-capitalized balance sheet with low leverage, stable funding and high levels of liquidity to enable the business priorities.”