By Jun Yuan Yong
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Investment firm BlueFive Capital will announce the close of a new $1 billion fund focused on private equity investments in Asia by the fourth quarter of 2025, its chief executive Hazem Ben-Gacem said on Wednesday.
The Abu Dhabi firm is raising funds from Middle Eastern family offices which are interested in investment opportunities in Asia, Ben-Gacem said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference in Singapore.
The new Asia fund will invest in Indonesian aviation and mining assets, as well as transport-related infrastructure assets in China, such as ports and airports.
“The direction of the geopolitics for the next, most likely, decade or two, is such where you will see a very close rerouting of both trade and capital between Asia, China and the Middle East. That’s where we at BlueFive want to play an anchor partner, to be kind of in the middle of that rerouting of capital,” he said.
Ben-Gacem, the former co-CEO of alternative investment firm Investcorp, said the fund has seen keen interest from Chinese institutional investors, although he did not give any names.
He said there is opportunity in China for the firm to build public-private partnerships with the government to acquire concession agreements in infrastructure assets such as airports and ports for a number of years. This would free up capital to fund the nation’s “very ambitious and audacious programme for growth”.
BlueFive Capital announced in July that it had raised $2 billion for a fund focused on private equity investments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
In August, Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat, acquired a stake in the firm. A growing number of smaller alternative asset managers and private equity firms are selling general-partner stakes in their management companies to raise capital without ceding control over operations or investment decisions.
Launched in November 2024, BlueFive has more than $6 billion in assets under management across offices in Bahrain, London, Abu Dhabi and Beijing.
(Reporting by Jun Yuan Yong; Editing by Kim Coghill)
