Qatar wealth fund expands into Australia, Korea and Southeast Asia

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The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, is in the middle of expanding into Australia, Korea and Southeast Asia, its top executive said on Thursday.

The state investor sees investment opportunities, including carve-outs among conglomerates and take-private deals in Japan and in the technology sector in India.

Qatar’s sovereign fund is one of the world’s largest state investors. The Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute projected that QIA runs $526bn worth of total assets.

“For Australia and Korea, we are going to start hiring people,” Abdulla Ali Al-Kuwari, head of Asia Pacific at Qatar Investment Authority Advisory, said at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2024 in Singapore.

“We started Japan with the team maybe three years ago, now we are doubling it, we are going to hire more and more people so it is a market to focus for us,” Al-Kuwari said.

The Asian expansion by QIA, which owns stakes in the London Stock Exchange and Iberdrola, comes as the fund has been diversifying its investments from core European and US markets.

The Qatari fund agreed to buy a 10 per cent stake in China’s second-largest mutual fund company, China Asset Management, in June.

Read: How GCC sovereign funds are conquering global markets