The Dubai-based company is targeting a launch AUM of $25-30m with the threeyear sukuk fund, and hopes to mirror the 5.5-6% average annual return of the Dow Jones City Sukuk Index. 

 

”We made an index that tracks the Dow Jones sukuk index so essentially the investor gets the same return as the sukuk index,” Akber Naqvi, executive director of Al Masah Capital, explained to Mena FM. “We are starting to get a lot of interest from investors who would like to increase the exposure to sukuks.”

 

In response to investor demand, the firm is also planning to add to its fixed income portfolio with four fixed income product launches planned for the coming year. “We intend to keep launching one every three months for the next six months to a year,” said Naqvi. “We had four last year and we’re going to have four this year. But a lot of last year’s fixed income funds will roll over into this year because they’re all one year durations.” Naqvi is targeting $10-15m in launch AUMs for the fixed income funds, growing this to approximately $50m over the course of the year. 

 

Al Masah won its DIFC licence in August 2010 and has raised approximately $300m since then, $200m of which is in its fixed income strategies. The firm has

its own Luxembourg-based fund platform, Al Masah Asset Management. It will manage the fixed income funds through the platform’s master fund Al Masah Capital Fund.