Bahrain Sovereign Fund Mumtalakat Signs $250m Loan Refinancing

Bahrain sovereign fund Mumtalakat said on Monday it had signed a $250 million loan to help refinance part of a larger five-year facility.

The revolving credit facility covers about half of a $500 million five-year loan which the fund had signed in August 2008. The other half had been partly repaid and partly refinanced over the past two years, the fund said in a statement.

The loan forms part of Mumtalakat’s overall financing and funding strategy, Mahmood Al Kooheji, CEO of Mumtalakat, said in the statement.

Five banks – National Bank of Bahrain, Gulf International Bank, BBK, Jordan’s Arab Bank and Dubai’s Mashreq – provided the new loan. The statement gave no other details about the loan.

One of the smaller sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf region, Mumtalakat had $7.1 billion of assets under management at the end of September. It holds stakes in 40 firms in the kingdom’s non-oil sector, including Bahrain Telecommunications Co (Batelco) and Aluminium Bahrain (Alba).