Bahrain's Gulf Finance Q3 loss widens to $115m
Bahrain's Gulf Finance House said on Wednesday its third-quarter net loss nearly quadrupled as the investment firm set aside more money to meet investment and loan losses amid shrinking revenues.
The Islamic investment firm and other Bahraini investment houses have struggled to restart revenue growth, after a 2008 regional property crash weakened their business model of earning fees on investor money raised for private equity and property projects.
GFH, which has restructured two loans worth a total of about $400m this year, said in an investor presentation seen by Reuters it plans to either restructure or sell down assets to repay $90m in term debt next year.
It plans to slash its paid-up capital by about 75 per cent to absorb its losses and raise up to $500m in additional funds through issuing a murabaha, an equity-linked Islamic money-market instrument. The Kuwait-listed shares in GFH have lost about 57 per cent of its value since the beginning of the year.
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