
Kenanga Investors Launches New Global Real Asset Fund
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA - Media OutReach Newswire - 3 June 2025 - Kenanga Investors Berhad (" Kenanga Investors") has announced the launch of the Kenanga Alternative Series: Global Real Assets Fund (" KASGRAF"), a new addition to its Kenanga Alternative Series (" Series"). The KASGRAF is an open-ended retail fund designed to achieve steady growth by diversifying investments across global real assets through carefully selected exchange-traded funds (" ETFs").
The Fund's ETF exposure is managed by GAX MD Sdn Bhd (" GAX MD" or " External Fund Manager"), which employs sophisticated algorithms and advanced investment models to ensure precise and effective management of global real assets. GAX MD is also the creator of MYTHEO, a digital investment management platform launched in Malaysia since 2019.
"The introduction of the KASGRAF enables Kenanga Investors to provide investors with enhanced growth opportunities through well diversified, global investment strategies. Amidst the complex economic landscape of today, the value of physical assets such as real estate, commodities and precious metals often appreciate, enabling investors to maintain the real value of their wealth. By integrating real assets into our portfolios, we offer our investors a robust hedge against market uncertainties and a means to achieve steady returns due to its sustainable growth potential", said Datuk Wira Ismitz Matthew De Alwis, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Kenanga Investors.
"Our partnership combines Kenanga Investors' extensive asset management expertise with GAX MD's advanced quantitative modelling capabilities, creating a strategy based on a systematic, data-driven and cost-efficient approach to portfolio construction that optimises performance while strengthening diversification and risk management", he elaborated.
KASGRAF aims to achieve a steady growth of investment assets and realise stable income, making it an ideal choice for investors with medium-term investment horizons. The fund's core strategy involves investing primarily in ETFs linked to a diverse array of real assets. This includes sectors such as real estate, precious metals and commodities. By diversifying across these areas, KASGRAF helps to mitigate risk while enhancing the potential for returns. The Fund is available for subscription in MYR with a minimum initial investment amount of RM1,000.
"We are excited to partner with Kenanga Investors in bringing our advanced proprietary algorithms to a wider audience. ETFs allow investors to access a diverse range of asset classes including real estate, commodities and precious metals, without the high costs and complexities of direct ownership. For optimal selection, the Fund's strategy follows a rigorous screening process based on key factors such as liquidity, expense ratios and tracking efficiency. By combining data-driven analysis with a structured ETF selection process, the strategy maximises efficiency while maintaining flexibility to adapt to evolving market conditions. At GAX MD, we are excited to contribute to the success of KASGRAF and its investors, empowering them to navigate the complexities of the market with confidence", said Ronnie Tan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of GAX MD.
The launch of the Series aligns with Kenanga Investors' longstanding goal of offering diverse investment solutions to meet investors' varying needs/objectives. In addition to KASGRAF, the Series also includes the Kenanga Alternative Series: Income Opportunities Fund and Kenanga Alternative Series: Islamic Global Responsible Strategies Fund. Each fund offers unique benefits, allowing investors to diversify and hedge their portfolios according to their needs. This commitment to innovative products has earned the firm recognition for its expertise in alternatives investments. This year it received the Malaysia Best House for Alternatives award from Asia Asset Management's 2025 Best of the Best Awards for the sixth time.
For more information about Kenanga Investors, please visit www.kenangainvestors.com.my.
Hashtag: #Kenanga
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
Kenanga Investors Berhad 199501024358 (353563-P)
We provide investment solutions ranging from collective investment schemes, portfolio management services, alternative investments, as well as wills and trusts for retail, corporate, institutional, and high net worth clients via a multi-distribution network.
The Morningstar Awards 2025 has recognised the Kenanga Blue Chip Fund as Best Malaysia Large-Cap Equity Fund. The Bursa Excellence Awards 2024 awarded KIB's exchange-traded funds' arm, Eq8 Capital Sdn Bhd with the Special Award – Thought Leadership for launching Eq8WAQF, the world's first Waqf-featured Exchange Traded Fund. Introduced under a newly established category, the award highlights innovations that are reshaping the investment landscape.
At the LSEG Lipper Fund Awards Malaysia 2025, KIB received awards for the Kenanga DividendEXTRA Fund ("KDEF") under the Best Equity Malaysia Diversified – Malaysia Funds over 3 years, Kenanga Malaysian Inc Fund ("KMIF") under the Best Equity Malaysia Diversified – Malaysia Provident Funds over 10 years, Kenanga Balanced Fund ("KBF") under the Best Mixed Asset MYR Balanced – Malaysia Provident Funds over 10 years, Kenanga Managed Growth Fund ("KMGF") under Best Mixed Asset MYR Flexible – Malaysia Provident Funds over 10 years, and Kenanga SyariahEXTRA Fund ("KSEF") under the Best Mixed Asset MYR Balanced – Malaysia Islamic Funds Awards over 10 years.
The Hong Kong-based Asia Asset Management's 2025 Best of the Best Awards awarded KIG under the following categories, Malaysia Best Impact Investing Manager, Best Impact Investing Manager in ASEAN, Malaysia Best Equity Manager, Malaysia CEO of the Year (Co-Winner), Malaysia CIO of the Year, Malaysia Best House for Alternatives, Malaysia Best ESG Engagement Initiative, Malaysia Fund Launch of the Year, and Malaysia Best Retail Asset Management Company.
The FSMOne Recommended Unit Trusts Awards 2024/2025 has awarded the Kenanga Growth Fund Series 2 with the "Sector Equity – Malaysia Focused" award for the third consecutive year since 2022. We were also recognised at The BrandLaureate BestBrands Awards 2024 - Brand of the Year under the category Wealth Management & Investment Solutions. For the eighth consecutive year, KIB was affirmed an investment manager rating of IMR-2 by Malaysian Rating Corporation Berhad, since first rated in 2017. The IMR rating on KIB reflects the fund management company's well-established investment processes and sound risk management practices.
This Press Release was issued by Kenanga Group's Marketing, Communications & Sustainability department.
Kenanga Investment Bank Berhad
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Zawya
9 hours ago
- Zawya
Brouq Developments appoints Azure Architects for upcoming New Cairo project launch
Brouq Developments has signed an agreement with Eng. Omar Okeil, Head of Azure Architects, in preparation for the launch of its latest project in New Cairo. The collaboration underscores the company's commitment to working with top industry experts in architectural design to deliver a project that meets the highest standards of quality and innovation. The agreement was signed by Eng. Ibrahim El-Said, Chairman of Brouq Developments, and Eng. Omar Okeil, Head of Azure Architects, in the presence of Eng. Islam Nabil, Deputy Head of Azure Architects, along with officials from both companies. Eng. Ibrahim El-Said, Chairman of Brouq Developments, stated that the agreement with Azure Architects aligns with the company's strategy of delivering projects based on smart and sustainable design standards. El-Said noted that Azure is a leading firm in the field, with an outstanding portfolio of landmark projects in the Egyptian market, making it an ideal partner to support the company's collaboration plans. He added: 'At Brouq Developments, we believe a project's strength starts with the quality of its planning and design. Accordingly, we selected a consulting partner with deep expertise and a contemporary architectural vision. We view this as a powerful launchpad for our New Cairo project, through which we aim to deliver real value that meets customer aspirations and enriches the market.' He pointed out that partnering with entities that have a proven track record and extensive experience in the sector contributes to enhancing the project's quality and increasing its investment value, with careful attention given to every detail. Therefore, selecting competent partners reflects the company's vision of delivering a real estate product that ensures customer satisfaction and strengthens its position in property market. The company's chairman added that the company is planning to soon launch its latest project in New Cairo — a residential-hotel development in one of the city's most prime locations. The project will feature fully finished units in various sizes, along with a premium serviced apartments. He added that the company has also signed agreements for the same project with Trust Engineering Consultancy to carry out the initial studies and feasibility assessments, and with KEM Consultant Group as the mechanical works consultant, ensuring the project is executed to the highest technical and engineering standards. Eng. Omar Okeil, Chairman of Azure Architects, stated that the collaboration with Brouq Developments aligns with the firm's approach of working with developers who have a clear and ambitious vision for delivering distinctive and unique projects to the Egyptian market, highlighted his company's extensive expertise in designing various residential and hotel projects. He noted that Azure Architects boasts an outstanding portfolio of unique projects in New Cairo, such as Lake View, Lake View Boutique Villas, and Lake View Residence, in addition to Downtown Mall—one of the key commercial hubs in the heart of Fifth Settlement—as well as the Dusit Hotel and Mangroovy Hotel. Okeil added that Azure Architects is among the leading firms to have participated in and overseen numerous landmark projects and prestigious international hotels across Egypt and the Arab region, including the Hilton Hotel, Burj Al Arab, and the Dusit Hotel. Eng. Islam Nabil, CEO of Azure Architects, said: 'At Azure, our top priority is to deliver integrated design solutions that seamlessly blend architectural elegance with the project's core functionality. We are now developing a unique design for Brouq's project that reflects its stature and vision in the Egyptian market, while maintaining our architectural signature both locally and internationally.'


Zawya
9 hours ago
- Zawya
Huawei named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for container management
Gartner released the Magic Quadrant for Container Management 2025, positioning Huawei in the Leaders quadrant. This recognition is attributed to Huawei Cloud's deep expertise and strategic investments in Cloud Native 2.0. Huawei Cloud has been at the forefront, launching several innovative container products like CCE Turbo, CCE Autopilot, Cloud Container Instance (CCI), and the distributed cloud-native service UCS. These products provide the optimal cloud-native infrastructure for managing large-scale, scalable containerized workloads across public clouds, distributed clouds, hybrid clouds, and edge environments. Huawei Cloud is an active open-source contributor and a leader in the cloud-native technology ecosystem. As a long-standing contributor to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Huawei Cloud has participated in 82 CNCF projects, holds over 20 project maintainer seats, and is the only Chinese cloud provider holding a vice-chair position on the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). Huawei Cloud has donated several projects to CNCF, including KubeEdge, Karmada, Volcano, and Kuasar, and contributed benchmark projects such as Kmesh, openGemini, and Sermant in 2024. Huawei Cloud offers the most comprehensive container product matrix in the industry, covering public cloud, distributed cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge scenarios. It has been extensively adopted in sectors like Internet, finance, manufacturing, transportation, electricity, and automotive, delivering pervasive cloud-native value. Furthermore, Huawei Cloud container services are actively deployed worldwide. The rapid growth of cloud-native compute power is widely acknowledged by global users and continually supports customers in achieving business success. Starzplay, an OTT platform in the Middle East and Central Asia, leveraged Huawei Cloud CCI to transition to a serverless architecture. This move enabled the platform to handle millions of access requests during the 2024 Cricket World Cup, while also reducing resource costs by 20%. Ninja Van, a leading logistics and express service provider in Singapore, has fully containerized its services using Huawei Cloud CCE. This cloud-native AI service architecture is both agile and efficient, ensuring zero service interruptions during peak hours and improving order processing efficiency by 40%. Chilquinta Energía, one of the three major power companies in Chile, has upgraded its big data platform to a cloud-native architecture using Huawei Cloud CCE Turbo. The new platform boasts a 90% improvement in average performance, propelling Chilquinta toward more intelligent and automated operations. Konga, Nigeria's leading comprehensive e-commerce platform, has fully transitioned to a cloud-native architecture based on CCE Turbo. This agile and flexible approach effectively ensured a smooth shopping experience for its millions of monthly active users. Meitu, a leading visual creation platform in China, leverages CCE and Ascend cloud services to efficiently manage AI computing resources. This supports the deployment and inference of various models and algorithms, ensuring rapid iteration of large-scale training and enabling 200 million monthly active users to share their life moments in real time. In the age of AI, Cloud Native 2.0 has been fully upgraded to incorporate intelligence. Huawei Cloud is building a next-generation AI-native cloud infrastructure powered by advanced AI technologies. In Cloud for AI, CCE AI clusters form the cloud-native infrastructure for CloudMatrix384 supernodes. These clusters offer large-scale supernode topology-aware scheduling, PD separation scaling, AI workload characteristic-aware auto-scaling, and ultra-fast container startups. These features significantly accelerate AI training and inference, enhancing the overall efficiency of AI tasks. AI is also revolutionizing the cloud service experience. Huawei Cloud is committed to integrating AI into its cloud offerings and has introduced CCE Doer. CCE Doer integrates AI agents throughout the container usage process, providing intelligent Q&A, recommendations, and diagnostics. It can diagnose over 200 critical exception scenarios with a root cause accuracy rate exceeding 80%, enabling automated and intelligent container cluster management. Cloud native is rapidly evolving toward serverless. Huawei Cloud offers two serverless container products: serverless Kubernetes cluster CCE Autopilot and serverless container instance CCI, which enable users to focus on application development and accelerate service innovation. The recently launched general-computing-lite and Kunpeng general-computing serverless containers enhance computing cost effectiveness by up to 40%, making them the ideal scaling solution for businesses dealing with tenfold increases in traffic. Huawei Cloud will continue to partner with global operators to advance cloud-native technology innovations and share its successes. This collaboration will drive unprecedented industry transformation, opening up new opportunities for a more inclusive, accessible, and resilient digital society. Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Container Management 2025. Disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications contain the opinions of Gartner research and advisory organizations, and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. GARTNER, MAGIC QUADRANT, and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.


Zawya
9 hours ago
- Zawya
Markaz sees robust activity in GCC real estate, expects continued sector growth in H2 of 2025
Kuwait City – Kuwait Financial Centre 'Markaz' has released its latest real estate market outlook, offering a comprehensive review of market performance across Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE for H1 2025, along with forward-looking insights for H2 2025. The report underlines the resilience of the GCC real estate sector, supported by sales activity, rising property values, and investor demand across residential, commercial, and hospitality segments. With macroeconomic indicators showing signs of continued recovery, Markaz expects real estate markets in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to maintain upward momentum through the second half of 2025. Lower interest rates, fiscal support, and sustained government investment in economic diversification are anticipated to drive growth and market confidence. Despite fiscal pressures in certain markets, the overall outlook for the GCC real estate sector remains positive, presenting ongoing opportunities for investors, developers, and stakeholders across the region. Kuwait: Stable Recovery Amid Expanding Economic Activity Kuwait's real estate market continued its recovery in Q1 2025, supported by rising land prices and rental values in the investment and commercial segments. Land prices in both sectors saw annual growth across all areas, while rental rates for three-bedroom and apartments of 60 sq.m. apartments in the Istithmari segment posted significant year-on-year increases. The office segment in the commercial sector remained flat overall, though select areas registered moderate growth in Q4 2024. Transaction activity also reflected a positive trend. Real estate sales rose by 45.0% y/y to KD 896 million in Q1 2025, driven by gains across all segments. Sales in the residential and commercial sectors increased by 38.5% and 22.9% y/y respectively, while the investment segment surged by 49.0%. The number of transactions also grew by 20.9% y/y, with residential and commercial transactions climbing by 11.7% and 163.6% respectively. The investment segment recorded a 29.7% y/y increase in transactions, supported by a stable rise in the expatriate population. Markaz expects Kuwait's real GDP to grow by 1.9% in 2025, a recovery from the 2.8% contraction in 2024. This growth, fueled by the rebound in oil GDP and stable non-oil performance driven by project activity, stable consumer spending, and legislative reforms, is anticipated to bolster demand in the commercial and industrial real estate sectors. The Markaz Real Estate Macro Index for Kuwait stands at 3.25 out of 5.0, signaling stable market conditions with room for further gains in H2 2025. Saudi Arabia: Momentum Builds as Diversification Drive Continues Saudi Arabia's real estate sector maintained solid performance in Q1 2025, underpinned by a 4.3% y/y rise in the real estate price index and a 37% y/y increase in real estate sales. Growth in residential and commercial property prices contributed to this trend, with the residential segment recording a 5.1% y/y increase and the commercial segment rising by 2.5% y/y. Demand for commercial properties remains robust, supported by non-oil economic growth and sectoral diversification. Saudi Arabia's fiscal deficit is expected to widen to 4.9% of GDP in 2025, from 2.8% of GDP in 2024, largely due to lower oil prices. While reduced revenues may impact government spending and project awards, the Kingdom has indicated plans to maintain its current level of investment in economic diversification. Based on macroeconomic indicators and real estate trends, Markaz believes that Saudi Arabia's real estate market remains in the accelerating phase in H1 2025 and is expected to sustain this momentum through H2 2025. UAE: Remarkable Transaction Growth and Global Investor Appeal The UAE real estate market posted remarkable results in Q1 2025, with transaction values reaching AED 239 billion (USD 65 billion). Dubai remained the standout performer, with total transaction value for 2024 rising by 20% y/y to AED 761 billion (USD 207.2 billion). The Emirate recorded 226,000 transactions in 2024 - up 36% y/y - and welcomed over 110,000 new real estate investors, a 55% y/y increase. In Q1 2025, Dubai alone accounted for AED 142 billion in sales from 45,077 transactions, a 30% y/y increase. Residential, office, and hospitality segments are expected to maintain a positive outlook in H2 2025, supported by robust demand, interest rate cuts, growing tourist inflows, and constrained supply in prime areas. Dubai and Abu Dhabi continue to outperform other global markets in rental yield, with Dubai reaching 7.6% as of May 2025, well above yields in New York (5.3%), Singapore (3.2%), and London (3.1%). With new supply expected, rental rates in Dubai may begin to stabilize, giving tenants more options. Markaz forecasts that the UAE's real estate sector will continue its upward trajectory in H2 2025, marked by steady appreciation in land prices and rental rates in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Despite evolving macroeconomic dynamics, the outlook for the GCC real estate sector remains positive, with solid investor interest, government-backed initiatives, and sectoral diversification continuing to support long-term growth. Markaz believes that real estate will remain a key contributor to the region's economic development through the second half of 2025 and beyond. About Kuwait Financial Centre 'Markaz' Established in 1974, Kuwait Financial Centre K.P.S.C 'Markaz' is one of the leading asset management and investment banking institutions in the MENA region with total assets under management of over KD 1.56 billion (USD 5.11 billion) as of 30 June 2025. Markaz was listed on the Boursa Kuwait in 1997. Over the years, Markaz has pioneered innovation through the creation of new investment channels. These channels enjoy unique characteristics and help Markaz widen investors' horizons. Examples include Mumtaz (the first domestic mutual fund), MRpodEF (the first real estate investment fund in Kuwait), Forsa Financial Fund (the first options market maker in the GCC since 2005), and the GCC Momentum Fund (the first passive fund of its kind in Kuwait and across GCC that follows the momentum methodology), all conceptualized, established, and managed by Markaz. For further information, please contact: Sondos Saad Corporate Communications Department Kuwait Financial Centre K.P.S.C. "Markaz" Email: Ssaad@