LAFICO’s Total Assets in Excess of 8 billion Libyan dinars

Khaled Amr Algonsel, Managing Director of LAFICO, talks about LAFICO’s portfolio and total assets.

He says: “Those responsible for the company during the previous regime decided to gather all these investments into one company and so they established LAFICO. The capital belonging to LAFICO and its portfolio in 1981 was worth around 225 million Libyan dinars. Since that period the company has been growing and investing all over the world. Some decisions were made by investment professionals for example the investment in Fiat in Italy and other investments in other countries. Other investment decisions on the other hand were political decisions, however now this side of operations has been shut down and we are trying to reconstruct these investments. Since that period LAFICO’s investment portfolio has increased and now has been valued at 3.6 billion Libyan dinars as fair value for these investments. Mostly this has been due to the recapitalisation of LAFICO’s profit generated from subsidiaries of LAFICO and not actually dependent on the share capital increases. The capital itself has been increased by the recapitalisation of the dividends and the profits of LAFICO from 225 million Libyan dinars in 1981 to the current 2 billion Libyan dinars. This is the general view of our portfolio at LAFICO.”

“The investment of LAFICO itself is focused on many countries around the world and is diversified in many sectors, such as holding companies, real estate companies, agriculture, mining, and even services. We have investments in over 30 countries around the world. To be more specific, around 9% of our investments are located in North Africa. 9% are in England, with the rest being around the world, including minor investments,” adds Algonsel.

“These investments are also concentrating on generating some profits for Libya in order to diversify the income of the country and LAFICO has succeeded in generating many benefits from its portfolio. First of all, we have generated more than 1 billion Libyan dinars from dividends after 30 years of service for Libya. LAFICO has succeeded in investing in some strategic companies such as Fiat in 1986 and when the decision was made to exit this investment it had generated more than 3 billion Libyan dinars. We have established a portfolio from these dividends which is still working and has grown to more than 8 billion Libyan dinars,” he continues.

“This is the success of LAFICO over 30 years. LAFICO has grown gradually over this time and has invested in many areas and in many countries in Europe and Africa, particularly in Egypt with investments in real estate companies,” concludes Algonsel.