Goldilocks Investment builds Dana Gas stake

An Abu Dhabi Global Market fund, Goldilocks Investment, said that it had acquired 5 per cent of Dana Gas, the Sharjah-based gas operator that is 19 per cent owned by Crescent Petroleum.

Goldilocks, which has a reputation of buying companies going through financial difficulties, said that it had acquired 350 million shares in Dana Gas, which has seen its share price rise by nearly 70 per cent in the past month to yesterday’s close of 68 fils.

The shares’ range over the past year is from a low of 39 fils to a high of 73 fils.

Goldilocks is part of Jassim Alseddiqi’s Abu Dhabi Financial Group, a diversified investment company with about US$5 billion under management.

Dana Gas has assets in Egypt and the Kurdish region of Iraq that have had good operational results but have suffered from erratic payments from the respective governments, which owe the company billions of dollars in arrears.

Dana Gas also has an ongoing dispute with holders of its $700 million in sukuk, for which it has taken preemptive legal action to avoid a declaration of default.

Goldilocks has grown from an initial seed of Dh100m in July 2015 to about Dh1.3bn, Mr Alseddiqi said in March. The return on the fund since its launch was 397 per cent, he said at the time.

“We are looking to grow it even further. We continuously bring in investors in it. Most of the investors are high net worth GCC investors,” he said in an article in The National.

ADFG has invested in high-profile situations before. Earlier in 2016, it bought a 48.3 per cent stake in Shuaa Capital, the investment bank formerly controlled by the Government of Dubai. It is also a 10 per cent shareholder in Gulf Finance House, the Bahrain-based and Dubai-listed Islamic financial institution.