Standing tall amid the fallen

Long gone are the days when the Middle East was the hot spot to set up shop, raise funds and invest in private companies with the promise of phenomenal returns. Before the global financial crisis struck in 2008, the region’s nascent private equity (PE) industry saw a boom in the number of firms while listings on Arab stock markets were oversubscribed to near insanity. Yet today, the PE industry’s easy pickings have all but vanished with the socio-political turmoil engulfing the Middle East. But even while the amount of capital raised in the region in recent years has fallen, one PE firm is still holding on to its bets: Saudi-based Amwal AlKhaleej.    Through two funds totaling some $650 million, Amwal acquired stakes between 20 and 40 percent in Middle East companies across different sectors, with an average ticket size of $30 million. Fully deployed, its current portfolio includes stakes