The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), the country's biggest lender, expects net profit to grow in the first half of the year, Chief Executive Ibrahim Dabdoub told CNBC Arabiya yesterday.
"Profit growth will exceed more than 20 per cent in the first half," he said, when asked whether recent consumer lending restrictions by the central bank would hit the bank's profit.
Dabdoub said the bank had diversified its sources of income by expanding abroad with foreign branches contributing 20 per cent to the bank's net income. "We expect them to contribute 50 per cent by 2015," he added.
The central bank of Kuwait has imposed lending restrictions for consumer loans which took effect end-March to battle record inflation hitting 10.14 per cent in February. NBK has expanded in the Middle East to offset rising competition at home by buying Al-Watany Bank of Egypt and a 40 per cent stake of unlisted Istanbul-based Turkish Bank last year. It is also active in Qatar through its affiliate International Bank of Qatar (IBQ). NBK National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) boosted net income in the first quarterly 28 per cent to a record KD82m (Dh1.1bn).
NBK said it had launched dollar-denominated Islamic Global Real Estate Securities Fund to take advantage of the highly-discounted prices in real estate securities that are currently trading on global markets.
The bank said that the fund had started to deploy its capital by investing in real estate securities in Asia, Europe and the US.
NBK Capital's Head of Wealth Management, Nabil Maroof, said the fund was established to achieve long-term capital growth through Shariah-compliant real estate portfolios.
(With inputs from Reuters)