Bahrain’s GFH succeeds in capital raising exercise

Gulf Finance House (GFH), the Bahrain-incorporated Islamic investment bank, seems to have hit its fund raising target of $350 million through a mixture of a rights issue, the partial sale of an equity stake and through a Murabaha placement facility. The capital raising exercise is aimed at strengthening the bank’s balance sheet and to enable it to engage in a number of high value investment opportunities presented by the global economic downturn. KPMG Corporate Finance acted as Issue Managers for the rights offering across regional markets, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch acted as Financial Advisor and Corporate Broker to GFH