Kuwait: Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund said on Sunday it had sold its stake in US bank Citigroup, becoming the latest Gulf investor to sell foreign shares as markets improve.
Kuwait Investment Auth-ority (KIA) transferred the preferred stocks it owned in Citigroup to normal stocks and sold all of them for $4.1 billion (Dh15.01 billion), KIA said in a statement.
KIA said it made a profit of $1.1 billion from the sale, or a 37 per cent return on its initial investment. "Kuwait Investment Authority had invested an amount of $3 billion in Citigroup in the form of preferred stocks in January 2008," KIA said.
It did not disclose the number of shares it had sold or what it planned to do with proceeds from the sale.
Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, which manages state assets in the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter, has come under fire from some parliamentarians for investing $5 billion in Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch has since been bought by Bank of America.
"Every sovereign wealth fund has its own agenda and plan for investments ... but one reason [for KIA's Citigroup stake sale] might be that the situation is better than before in the US and ... maybe investors can pull back their money," said Naser Al Nafisi, general manager for Al Joman Centre for Economic Consultancy in Kuwait.
