The commodities count

Commodity plays have been the major story in Kuwait since the start of this year, while other asset classes have taken a back seat. The National Bank of Kuwait has seized the opportunity by offering a range of commodity products, and is also planning to enter the sharia-compliant structured product space. Matt Cameron reports

"Recently, there has been increased interest in commodity-linked structures in Kuwait and the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) region," says Fadi Chalouhi, structured products manager at National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) in Kuwait City. "The appetite for commodities arises from solid fundamentals on the asset class and a lack of convincing arguments on most other asset classes including equities, fixed income and FX."

The commodity-linked structures distributed by NBK range from two- to five-year