Measuring the Gulf’s “smaller” sovereign funds by mandates, not a uniform set of metrics

Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman’s sovereign funds each had a big 2025 showing to wave around. Oman’s OIA posted a 14.6% return and USD 7.5 bn in profit, among the best showings of any sovereign fund in the world. Kuwait’s KIA sits on more than USD 1 tn. Bahrain’s Mumtalakat nearly doubled its net profit to a record BHD 592.7 mn. The usual scorecard metrics (returns, assets, and profit) would rank these three funds in roughly the same order, but that ranking overlooks the fact that each fund was built for a different job.

The most flattering figure is seldom the best measure: Sovereign wealth funds’ performance across the region is “increasingly viewed through a broader lens,” Deloitte Middle East Sovereign Wealth Fund Leader Julie Kassab tells EnterpriseAM. They’re now judged on “their ability to attract private capital, build new industries, create jobs, and develop national capabilities,” alongside their returns, Kassab says. In the first part of this series, we mapped how KIA, OIA, and Mumtalakat divide the labor across Gulf capital — three distinct mandates too often lumped together by size. Today, we turn to the scorecard: Why each fund’s standout 2025 number isn’t the most important thing to look at, and what to measure in its place.

Misleading metrics

OIA reported a 14.6% return last year and finished in third place in Global SWF’s five-year league table, but these figures are the easiest part of the fund to misread. Nearly two-thirds of the book sits at home, in a National Development Fund worth about 60% of assets, so the return partly tracks Oman’s own economy. And the fund’s newest, most strategic vehicle, Future Fund Oman (FFO), doesn’t register in it at all. “OIA only publishes an overall financial return, so we cannot judge FFO's financial performance,” says Diego Lopez, founder and managing director of research house Global SWF. In the same breath, the headline number flatters the fund and buries its most interesting .

KIA’s USD 1 tn-plus is the largest number in this story and the least revealing. A 1982 law bars the fund from disclosing its holdings to the public, and its money mostly moves through outside managers — “usually done via funds, without disclosure requirements,” as Lopez puts it. While the AUM figure is massive and a reflection of Kuwait’s wealth, it says very little about what the fund is actually doing with the money.

Meanwhile, Mumtalakat’s record bottomline is perhaps the most misleading of the three, because much of it may not come back. The nearly-doubled net earnings leaned on fair-value gains from McLaren — which capped its season with a Formula 1 constructors’ and drivers’ double — and on Alba’s BHD 218.7 mn profit on record 1.62 mn-tonne production at elevated aluminium prices. Roy Conners, a Gulf sovereign wealth fund analyst speaking in a personal capacity, argues that a conventional savings-fund benchmark does not fully capture Mumtalakat’s mandate. “A more relevant comparison is with strategic holding companies such as Malaysia’s Khazanah or Mubadala before its merger era,” he says.

What to measure instead

Each fund calls for its own yardstick. For OIA, the benchmark is asset recycling. The National Development Fund holds the domestic companies and accounts for about 60% of assets, while the Future Generations Fund holds the international portfolio. That allocation creates concentration considerations, but Conners views it as a deliberate policy choice rather than portfolio drift. In 2025, the national portfolio returned 15.87% and channeled OMR 2.4 bn into Oman Vision 2040 projects. Kassab describes the payoff the region is chasing: Domestic investment “can create a powerful multiplier effect when it develops new industries, strengthens local capabilities, and attracts additional private capital.”

FFO needs a yardstick of its own — the USD 5.2 bn vehicle excludes oil, gas, and real estate and exists to crowd in foreign capital. Its success “should be based not only on IRR but also on FDI and other economic metrics,” Lopez says. Conners assesses Future Fund Oman through two lenses: The private-capital multiplier and the long-term sustainability of the businesses it supports. Against OMR 2 bn committed, the fund has approved 186 projects and helped attract an estimated OMR 743 mn in foreign investment.

For KIA, watch the terms rather than the size. The past year shows what all that scale is for. KIA became the first non-founder financial anchor in the USD 30 bn AI Infrastructure Partnership built by MGX, BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, and Microsoft, backed Brookfield’s USD 10 bn AI infrastructure fund, and joined KKR, NVIDIA, and Vistra as a founding investor in Helix Digital Infrastructure, the platform run by former AWS chief Adam Selipsky. “Anchor participation can be an important source of differentiated access,” Conners says. “It can improve allocation, create co-investment opportunities and give an investor a role when new platforms are being formed.”

Kassab’s caveat is that capital alone won’t hold that seat: Access “depends on more than capital… It requires trusted partnerships, technical understanding, and the ability to navigate complex global ecosystems.” What matters is whether KIA keeps landing anchor economics, or slips back to being “the eighth LP in the door.”

For Mumtalakat, the measure is active ownership. Sustainable performance “increasingly depends on active ownership rather than individual events,” Kassab says, pointing to “improving portfolio company performance, strengthening operational capabilities… and building partnerships.” “Building on a strong 2025, performance in 2026 is likely to depend increasingly on portfolio execution, capital recycling and platform development,” Conners says. “Mumtalakat has demonstrated the capacity to execute across those areas.”

The play behind each number

Behind every yardstick sits a strategy. OIA is banking on a simple premise: That a fund can de-risk its own economy from the inside, with heavy domestic exposure working as a flywheel, provided capital keeps cycling back out to private investors. “The structure can create a virtuous circle, provided capital continues to be recycled through listings, divestments and greater private-sector participation,” Conners says.

KIA is betting that scale and secrecy, turned into anchor positions, buy it a permanent seat at the AI table. Both Conners and Lopez expect KIA’s investment model to continue evolving. “Five years from now, KIA may retain its predominantly manager-led model while taking recurring anchor positions in major AI and digital-infrastructure platforms,” Conners says.

Lopez is “bullish” on its “prospects with younger leadership, once the war ends.” Kassab reads the trajectory with a domestic tilt, describing a KIA that pairs “significant scale and institutional heritage with a renewed focus on supporting domestic priorities following the recent restructuring of its investment platform."” The threat is the crowd: “As more sovereign investors pursue similar themes, outcomes are likely to depend increasingly on entry timing, terms and the quality of platform access,” Conners notes.

Mumtalakat’s aim is to be indispensable rather than big. The steady run of Abu Dhabi partnerships has fed talk of Bahrain as a junior partner, which both analysts reject. "I wouldn't call it a junior partner, or dependent on other GCC economies," Lopez says. Conners points to the deal structures — in the USD 5 bn McLaren transaction, Mumtalakat is the majority shareholder while CYVN holds a non-controlling stake — and to Bahrain having made itself "the operating venue." Kassab reads that smaller scale as leverage rather than weakness, as it can be a way to yield “more targeted partnerships, closer collaboration, and opportunities linked to the development and transformation of national champions.” The test is whether it can grow earnings from its portfolio companies in a year with no McLaren revaluation and no aluminium spike.