Doha Investment nearly doubles Qatar’s active asset management program to QAR 5 bn

Doha Investment is nearly doubling Qatar’s Active Asset Management Initiative to QAR 5 bn, with the bump up from QAR 2.6 bn coming in as new funds open to eligible local and international managers, according to a statement. Doha Invest — the Qatar Investment Authority’s domestic arm — calls the top-up “an acceleration of a planned expansion.”

That makes this the first tranche to bring fresh buying power to the Qatar Stock Exchange. When QIA launched the initiative in January 2024, it seeded the funds by reallocating shares it already held in QSE-listed companies, moving stock from a passive state holder to active managers without adding any new demand. New money speaks directly to the two goals Doha Investment has set for the program: Deeper liquidity and wider institutional participation.

Small bourse, real cheque

The QAR 2.4 bn top-up is roughly 0.4% of the QSE’s QAR 557 bn market cap, by our calculation, but close to two weeks of trading average of about QAR 282 mn a day for the first half of October. The full QAR 5 bn equals some 4.7% of the bourse’s 2025 traded value, according to Global SWF (pdf).

The QE Index rose 2.75% on the day of the announcement, adding about QAR 16 bn in market value, trimming its year-to-date loss to 15% from nearly 18%. “The recent rally is driven by a combination of both regional geopolitical development as well as the localized liquidity catalyst related to Doha Investment,” Junaid Ansari, director and head of investment strategy and research at Kamco Invest, tells EnterpriseAM.

Trading values tripled to QAR 990 mn on 27 October from QAR 312 mn on 25 October, which Ansari reads as institutional buying ahead of liquidity he expects to arrive over the next year. Like Saudi’s TASI, which rallied in step, the QSE had hit oversold levels in the prior fortnight.

The initiative’s managers are Ashmore Group, Fiera Capital, Franklin Templeton and Lesha Bank. Ashmore went first, launching a Qatar equity fund in 2024 with about USD 200 mn and QIA as anchor investor.

Built for future listings

The bigger play is privatization. Doha Investment, which runs QIA’s 45-company domestic book, can use the initiative’s managers — Ashmore, Fiera Capital, Franklin Templeton and Lesha Bank — to build a pool of buyers for future IPOs and share sales, Global SWF argues. The full QAR 5 bn equals about 91% of the USD 1.5 bn raised in 14 QSE offerings since 2017, by its count.

“Sustaining elevated trading volumes would also require other reforms such as IPOs and increasing foreign ownership levels,” Ansari adds. Global SWF flags a harder test: Drawing in private money, and letting managers sell weak or overpriced holdings rather than hold them for strategic reasons.