Kuwait pension fund posts record first-quarter investment profit

Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security posted a record first-quarter investment profit following a reboot of its strategy as the pension fund put behind a corruption scandal involving a previous manager.

The fund, which owns 25 per cent of US private equity firm Stone Point Capital, had an investment profit of $7.3bn in the three months through June, it said in a statement. That compares with about $4.4bn for the fiscal year through March 2019, when it last released data.

A new management team was brought into the fund in 2017 to transform the state-owned institution after its former head was found guilty of personally profiting from the organisation over decades.

The performance is “undoubtedly a turning point” for the institution, which is “reaping the fruits” of its new investment strategy, Raed Al-Nisf, deputy general manager for investments and operations, said in the statement.

That strategy, with advice from Cambridge Associates, has seen the fund reduce its cash available for investments to 11.5 per cent by the end of June, from 37.2 per cent at the end of March, 2017, he said. It aims to reduce that to 4 per cent by the end of March 2021.

The fund, which held $112bn in assets at the end of March last year, also owns a 10 per cent stake in New York-based buyout firm TowerBrook Capital Partners, and has holdings in more than 40 stocks on the Boursa Kuwait.