Thursday, October 29, 2009

Gold ETC slow to take off in Gulf

The Gulf region's first gold exchange traded commodity (ETC), a new investment vehicle launched earlier this year, is seeing only modest growth due to regional unfamiliarity with the product.
Grant Collins, senior managing director of the Dubai Commodity Asset Management, told Reuters the security was also hampered by a trend for bullion investment in the Middle East to come from individuals rather than institutions or funds.
Collins told the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit that the group may not have realised just how much people preferred to have the gold rather than a gold-backed product.
The Dubai Multi Commodity Centre (DMCC) began offering the gold-backed ETC earlier this year in a bid to tap the local market's appetite for Islamic banking products.
Each security is 100 percent backed by physical gold, which is held in a safe kept by an independent custodian. One share represents 1 ounce of gold.
Collins said the instrument, which has traded some 40,000 shares worth about $4 million this year, had not been very popular because ETCs were not yet common.
"There just hasn't been a proper asset allocation model in this region," Collins told Reuters
The full text of the story is on Reuters.com at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/MiddleEastInvestment09/idUSTRE59R2J720091028

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