GCC assets under management: a rough ride

This comes from the brilliant MR Raghu of Markaz in Kuwait: Funds in the GCC aren't holding their assets well. Assets under management for GCC funds declined by 46 per cent in the last half of 2008 alone, and lost another 23 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

That doesn't bode well for asset managers in the region, many of whom had hoped that the recent market declines would lead individual investors to seek professional assistance with their portfolios. There is a (slight) silver lining to all this, however. First, a lot of this decline in assets under management is surely attributable to market performance, which had been abysmal across the GCC until the past month or so. Second, Islamic funds, on which plenty of managers have pinned their hopes, aren't declining in assets under management as much as conventional ones.

Here's Mr Raghu's analysis: