Kuwait’s Global Says Completes $1.7bn Restructuring

Kuwait’s Global Investment House said on Wednesday that it had completed a $1.7 billion restructuring plan, the second at the firm since the global financial crisis.

Under the plan, Global separated its core fee business from other parts of the company which were spun off into special purpose vehicles (SPV).

Global was one of several Kuwaiti investment firms hit hard by the crisis. It used short-term debt to invest heavily in local real estate and stocks whose values later slumped.

Global created two SPVs under the plan. One holds company assets, along with debt, worth $1.3 billion.

The other took part in a capital increase for the parent company, in which Global offered KD122.2 million ($429 million) of new shares to creditors, leaving them owning 70 per cent of the investment firm.

Shares in Global, which were delisted from Kuwait’s stock exchange in June, had not traded in Kuwait since December 2011, when the bourse suspended the stock after the company accumulated losses exceeding 75 per cent of its capital.