Kuwait Financial Centre “Markaz,” the Manager of Markaz Real Estate Opportunities Fund (MREOF), announced a successful exit in Clemenceau Residence development in Lebanon, and a partial distribution of profits realized to the unitholders of the fund with the amount of USD 6 million. The total profit of the project is estimated to be 25%. With this distribution, the fund has now returned to the investors all of their capital with a return on investment of approximately 6%. Clemenceau Residence represents the largest investment of MREOF, which is a Shari’ah-compliant closed-ended fund.
Mr. Bassam N. Al Othman, Executive Vice President, MENA Real Estate, commented: “Over the years, Markaz has carved out a reputation for itself as a leading asset manager offering an impressive portfolio of attractive top-tier income-generating funds. Our real estate products have seen sustained demand as a result of our strong focus on prudent quality investments that are delivered with due diligence, timely acquisitions, and world-class execution. We have always remained keen on harnessing our real estate market expertise to manage properties efficiently in order to yield stable income and generate returns for our investors and shareholders.”
“The continuing success of our MREOF is a compelling testimony to the robustness and resilience of our investment products and signifies our in-depth experience in real estate investments in the MENA regions. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our investors for their continued support and trust, while we continue divesting the remaining investments”, Mr. Al Othman added.
Launched in 2007, Markaz Real Estate Opportunities Fund was established in an effort to benefit from the rise of the real estate market in the MENA region through the development of residential and commercial real estate properties. The strategy for the fund has been to collaborate with local mid-size developers who are knowledgeable of the local market execution and supply/demand side, then exiting the investment through the sale of developed real estate units within the real estate market. The fund, which had an offering size of approximately USD60 million, has exited from investments in KSA, Qatar, Jordan and Lebanon. The investments focused predominantly on development projects in various real estate segments and sought to benefit from the supply-demand imbalance in the regional real estate markets. Markaz’s portfolio of real estate investment products also include Markaz Real Estate Fund and Markaz Gulf Real Estate Fund (a private placement fund). Markaz currently manages real estate investments in the region with a total value of more than 1bn USD (as of 30 June 2020), through providing a full spectrum of services asset management, development and property management.