When Mr. Kashadah was first appointed as managing director of LAP in September 2011, he had to overcome insuperable difficulties. First were the effects of the revolution: “When we first came to LAP the building was looted, so we had a serious loss of documentation.” Next, it was discovered that “LAP had no clear financial statements. Transparency had to be restored and confidence regained". Finally, during the revolution many of LAP’s assets were frozen by foreign governments.
Addressing the Crans Montana Forum on Africa and African Development in Brussels, Belgium, last spring, Mr. Kashadah highlighted the new strategies developed to conduct the LAP as a “professional investment portfolio with no political or personal interests.” He also briefed the forum in how “LAP’s image has been improved as a result of the efforts of LAP Groups teams.”
The Libya Africa Investment Portfolio is unique in that it was created to invest surplus Libyan oil revenues outside of Libya. As Mr. Kashadah explains, “By law LAP is not allowed to invest in Libya. We have an exemption from this law in two of our subsidiaries, but generally by law we cannot invest in Libya.” Instead, Mr. Kashadah says, “LAP is a future generation fund that is trying to help the country diversify its income away from oil.”
The goal of LAP, therefore, according to Mr. Kashadah, is to “build a strong fund that acts like a private equity fund but is not really private equity. The difference between a private equity fund and us is that a private equity fund would build businesses and they would sell them. We build businesses to stay and add value to the regions that we enter.”
In further explanation, Mr. Kashadah goes on to say:
“We are trying to build a healthy future generation fund. We believe in the importance of investing in the neighboring countries, we share geography and more than that we share religion and history in some cases with these countries.”
(Source: Marcopolis)
