Qatar looks to China for more investments

The $62 billion Qatar Investment Authority (QIA)Â could access a greater range of investments in China if its government executes plans to set up an investment promotion office in Beijing in 2010.



The Qatar Investment Promotion Department, a government unit aiming to attract corporate and private investors to its economy, plans to establish a Beijing office to catalyse and manage investment flows between Qatar and China.

Speaking to China Daily, Farzam Kamalabadi, president of Future Trends International (FTI), said the Qatari Government office would help the country’s institutional investors, such as the QIA, to pursue opportunities in the banking, real estate, infrastructure, chemical and water treatment industries in China.

Kamalabadi, a former senior advisor to the national oil industries of Oman, Iran, Kuwait and China, spoke to the Chinese newspaper during the Global Think Tank Summit in Beijing earlier this month.

The US-headquartered FTI is a group of companies focusing on China’s oil, gas and energy industries, including funds and investments related to these sectors, but also operates in other regions and industries.

Sponsored Content

The group has run energy industry operations in the Middle East and China, and also runs commodities investment funds. Citing this experience, it pitches itself as a capable advisor for government and businesses setting up or expanding their operations in China.

It vendors the China AME Energy Fund, a partnership between FTI, Arch Group and financial Partners Bank, which makes medium-term equity investments in mid-market energy, oil and gas companies in China, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.

FTI is also setting up a China Real Estate Fund and China Clean Energy Fund.

Leave a Comment

Sort content by

Blinder: a power of paradox at Princeton

Pension funds or any investor holding a slug of long-term fixed income needs to factor in some capital losses soon, says Princeton academic and former vice president of the Federal Reserve, Alan Blinder. “The timing is difficult to predict, but three or 15 months, it doesn’t matter. It is predictable,” he says. “The unpredictable part

UniSuper defies accepted thinking

Mention any asset class to John Pearce, chief investment officer of Australian superannuation fund UniSuper, and he will doggedly set out the good and bad thinking around it. A common source of his ire is the sight of investors herding around a belief based on a lack of rigorous thinking. Good practice for him involves

OTPP deals with underfunding

Even the most successful and well run pension plans are facing underfunding challenges. The $129-billion Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is the latest to investigate solutions to solve the mismatch between the pension promise and the funds required to meet that, says Jim Leech, chief executive of the organisation . OTPP has appointed a taskforce – chaired

Fewer, bigger funds for UK?

Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark have all done it. Kazakhstan and even Oman are talking about it. Increasingly, public sector pension funds are merging or pooling their assets into fewer bigger schemes. It’s no surprise the debate is gathering momentum in the United Kingdom, ripe for consolidation with a Local Government Pension Fund Scheme

Scenario analysis: applicable to anything?

Attempts to apply a formula to asset allocation based on an asset’s historical volatility and relationship with other assets tend to fail when presented with black-swan events. Equities tend to rise along with commodities except when presented with political events such as the price hikes in oil in 1973 that sent equities into free fall.

Kurtzer on Holy Land of opportunity

The Middle East is in a state of dynamic flux, with positive change manifesting itself in the countries going through an economic and financial revolution as much as a political one. Institutional investors from all parts of the world have a role to play in that revolution, according to former US ambassador to Egypt and

Previous