Qatar to invest $6.3bn in UK in 3-5 years

LONDON: Qatar will invest £ 5 billion ($ 6.3 billion) in Britain over the next few years, the country’s minister of finance said during a visit to London on Monday.

Earlier, the head of the Gulf Arab state’s sovereign wealth fund said he still saw opportunities to invest in Britain after it leaves the EU.

“Qatar will invest £5 billion in the UK over the next 3-5 years,” Finance Minister Ali Sherif Al-Emadi told Reuters.

Speaking at the forum, UK’s Trade Minister Liam Fox said that Britain would double the amount of export finance available to support trade with Qatar to £4.5 billion.

“No trade between the UK and Qatar should fail for lack of finance and insurance, that is why the UK government ... can give buyers and sponsors in Qatar attractive long-term finance to make sourcing from the UK more competitive,” he said.

Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth Fund said it would open an office in San Francisco to expand its growing US portfolio, and was still considering investing in a technology fund formed by SoftBank Group Corp.

The Qatar Investment Authority ( QIA), one of the most active of its kind, has stakes in everything from real estate to luxury goods — traditionally largely in Europe. But it has said it is looking to diversify into Asia and the US.

“Soon we will be opening an office in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco,” the fund’s CEO, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud Al-Thani, told reporters at an investment conference in London.

“What we plan is to open the office hopefully by the end of this year, if not by end of this year then it will be first quarter of next year. It will be linked very commercially to our office in New York and we will take it from there,” he said.

Qatar was considering investing in a $ 100 billion global technology fund formed by SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese telecommunications and Internet company, and Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg reported in October.

“We are still in a study but we have not made a decision yet,” Al-Thani said on Monday.

In 2015 Qatar said it would spend $35 billion in the US over the next five years after opening an office in New York. In December the fund said it would invest $10 billion in infrastructure projects inside the US.

The QIA has about $334 billion of assets according to industry- tracker Sovereign Wealth Center.