Abu Dhabi: SEDCO Capital, a two year old Jeddah-based asset management company, expects assets to double in within 5 -7 years due to rise in demand on Sharia and Islamic law compliant investments, Hassan Al Jabri, SEDCO Capital’s CEO, told Gulf News in a phone interview.

“We are seeing demand increasing in the coming five to seven years, leading to our assets to double. Certainly, we expect assets under management to double in the coming era as we are expanding in new areas to meet the rise in demand on Sharia-based investments,” Al Jabri said.

“SEDCO Capital is currently managing Dh11.04 billion ($3 billion) in client assets. Since our launch in 2012, we targeted sustainable growth through diversifying our global and across industry managing style by investing in primary funds and direct shared investments,” said Al Jabri.

SEDCO, a subsidiary of SEDCO Holding, launched an entity in Luxembourg last year to extend services to Sharia compliant private equity, real estate and commodities.

He added that markets are still dynamic; however, they are volatile and short-term in nature.

“Therefore, we launched Sedco Capital Sentiment Fund to invest globally in public equities,” said Al Jabri

He pointed out that the company is looking into new asset categories in addition to financial and real estate to cover agriculture investments.

“We had taken investing in agricultural marketing companies, logistics and farms very seriously in terms of private equity,” said Al Jabri.

New opportunities

He said that SEDCO Capital has established a global network of investment relations around the world specialising in public equity markets, private equity space and real estate investments.

The company had explored new opportunities in alternative energy and had taken into consideration co-investments with major international private equity managers, the CEO said.

“We own and run a wide portfolio of diverse global real estate from prime city centre properties in some of the world’s great capitals to vacant plots. We have investments in the Americas [USA], Europe, [UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France and Luxembourg], the Far East and India [India and China], the GCC region and the Levant [Lebanon, Sharjah, Bahrain and Morocco],” Al Jabri added.

Al Jabri said they selected Luxembourg as a base because of regulations and transparency measures.

“We now manage, advise, monitor and report on an investment portfolio. We believe this combination of local and international expertise allows us a wider range of options to fulfil the individual needs of our clients. We are domiciled onshore in a major financial jurisdiction, Luxembourg which is quite suitable for us to operate,” said Al Jabri.

He added that SEDCO had many plans to expand throughout the coming few years.

“We are planning to have more than 15 Capital global funds as we are having now only 7 funds to focus on asset class totalling more than $1.6 billion by the end of 2013,” said Al Jabri added.