Hail Heraymila!

Deputy Finance Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama being given an attentive hearing by the Heraymila Sri Lanka team last night at the reception hosted by the latter to announce the launch of Sri Lankan operations of Dubai-based investment arm of the Saui Arabia's wealthy Al Mashal family.

Heraymila Investments Dubai and Heraymila Securities Ltd Managing Director Vinod Krishnan (third from left), CEO/Director Ravi Abeysuriya, (second from right), Directors W.A. Wijewardena (right) and Mohammed Riyas look on. Pic by Upul Abayasekara

    * Key global investment arm of wealthy Saudi Arabia’s Al Mashal family breaks new ground with its Lankan footprint

    * Foresees decades of double growth in post war era starting from 2011

    * To ethically promote wealth management, investment banking and capital markets products to local and global clients

A key global investment arm of the wealthy Saudi Arabia’s Al Mashal family yesterday formally announced its ground breaking footprint in Sri Lanka aiming to offer a suite of products and services to local and global clients keen on benefiting from decades of future growth in post-war era in the country.

The venture Heraymila Investments (named after the home city of Al Mashal family), recently acquired Amana Securities and is already engaged in stock broking. Plans are underway to unveil a range of innovative and ethically marketed wealth management, investment banking and capital markets products to both local and global clients and partners of Heraymila.

Heraymila Investments, headquartered in UAE and registered with Dubai Financial Centre, manages over US$ 260 million out of the family wealth of Al Mashal, which has interests in aircraft leasing for European commercial airlines, investments in real estate, commodities, currencies, apart from public and private equity in over 30 countries.

Al Mashal’s interest in Sri Lanka originated much before the war ended. It first entered Sri Lanka in 2005 via the Colombo stock market by acquiring a 10% stake then in the country’s biggest private sector bank COMBank with an investment of US$ 25 million. Since then with the advice of Mohammed Riyas (formerly Director Sales and Business Development at Amana Securities and now Director in Heraymila Securities) its investments have expanded to diversified blue chips, banking and telecom whilst the current portfolio is worth over Rs. 3 billion.

“We came to Sri Lanka at the height of the war and have gradually expanded our presence which shows we are a committed long term investor,” said Heraymila Investments and Heraymila Securities Managing Director Vinod Krishnan who has been associated with Al Mashal family for 18 years.

He said that in tandem with dynamics of a country, GDP, opportunities and stock market, the Al Mashal family adjusts their asset allocation. “Like all ultra high net worth families in the world, Al Mashal focus is on capital preservation via investments and operating businesses and not rapid appreciation. At Heraymila we continuously seek emerging and frontier markets and Sri Lanka is one with tremendous upside potential thanks to the end of the war,” Krishnan added.

With its footprint firmly established in Sri Lanka, he said Heraymila will aggressively promote Sri Lanka as an investment and business destination among its worldwide clients.

Incidentally Sri Lanka is the first country where Heraymila has set up shop outside Dubai to launch financial services products and services. “The post war potential and outstanding talent pool were among the key magnets for this decision,” Krishnan said.

The CEO of local operations is top financial markets expert Ravi Abeysuriya whilst Heraymila Securities in total employs four Chartered Financial Analysts, said to be the highest by a broking firm.

“Heraymila will make a transformational change to the capital markets in Sri Lanka by introducing an arrangement for wealth management, investment banking and capital markets products similar to developed markets and be the ‘wealth catalyst’ to the nation,” Abeysuriya said. “Dependable customer service through a handpicked team of qualified investment advisors and strong ethics will be the cornerstone of our business practice,” he added.

Heraymila sees vast scope for innovative wealth management products and a relationship-oriented client-broker approach to portfolio management.

As part of its foray into and better harness the potential of Sri Lanka, Heraymila has launched a special Country research report which also provides a model for post-war economies.

Its author, the Group’s Consultant Economist Shamubeel Eaqub forecasts Sri Lanka’s economy to hit double digit growth from 2011 in addition to post-war era enjoying decades of high growth.

“Our bottom-up analysis of the war-affected regions of Sri Lanka suggests the economy may be 13% larger, without accounting for additional multiplier benefits,” Eaqub said. According to him a burst of growth for Sri Lanka will initially come from investment in infrastructure, construction and other business activities. Long term benefits will emerge from sustained growth in household income and spending; higher export earnings; better economic infrastructure and sustained peace, he added quoting from the report.

“Post war recoveries that had protracted wars are usually impressive and Sri Lanka is easily poised to sustain double digit growth from 2011 onwards,” opined the Bangladeshi born Eaqub who has worked in Goldman Sachs in addition to extensive stints in New Zealand and Australia.