The Scoop
Emerging markets asset manager Gemcorp has closed a $20 million private credit deal in Saudi Arabia, a senior executive told Semafor, aimed at providing funding to small and medium-sized companies.
The kingdom has said it wants SMEs to boost their GDP contribution from 20% to 35% by 2030 and told financial institutions to allocate at least 20% of their loan portfolios to smaller firms.
The money from Gemcorp will be used by SILQ, which provides services such as procurement, payments, and financing for small businesses.
The transaction was the first “direct lending” deal for Gemcorp in the kingdom and was also structured to be Shariah-compliant, said Petar Ivanovic, principal at Gemcorp. The firm plans to build a portfolio focused on the intersection of fintech and private credit in Saudi Arabia.
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Private credit has found a ready market in the Gulf, where banks have long been wary of lending to small businesses and fast-growing sectors like tech. In Saudi Arabia, lenders are also contending with tight liquidity. That gap has drawn everyone from Goldman Sachs to Apollo into the region’s private credit market in recent years.
Atanas Bostandjiev, a former Goldman Sachs partner, founded Gemcorp in 2014 and has since pushed more than $9 billion into markets most lenders won’t touch, including Angola, DR Congo, and more recently Venezuela.
Gemcorp plans to raise a $1 billion fund out of Abu Dhabi focused on Africa, as the London-based firm looks to tap into the UAE’s standing as the continent’s top foreign investor. It’s also raising $1 billion in Saudi Arabia, where it’s targeting deals across mining and rare earth minerals, technology, and social infrastructure like schools, hospitals, and workers’ accommodations.
Notable
- PwC said the Gulf countries’ private credit market was expected to grow between 15-30% annually over the next five to six years.