Kuwait ill-equipped to deal with global crisis

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait's scramble to prop up a top bank and guarantee bank deposits this week have highlighted how ill-equipped the Gulf Arab oil producer is to deal with the global crisis despite its enormous oil wealth.

The major OPEC producer had to step in earlier this week to save Gulf Bank after the country's fifth-largest bank by market value made losses on currency derivatives just a week after its earnings statement said it enjoyed "a robust capital base."

Kuwait is home to the Arab world's second largest bourse yet political bickering has stalled plans to set up a stock market regulator and the lack of oversight means companies can cover up massive losses until the last minute.

Rules requiring companies to disclose only the most basic financial details make it virtually impossible to predict whether Gulf Bank's problems were an isolated incident or the tip of a large iceberg, say analysts.

The lack of transparency and fear of more troubles to come has left the government struggling to restore confidence in the sinking bourse, weeks after Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund began pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into ailing stocks.

"A lack of structures such as a regulator has increased the impact of the crisis," said Amani Bouresli, a professor of finance at Kuwait University and co-author of a stock market regulation bill that has been delayed for over a year.

Bouresli said the government had been slow to react, only setting up another official task group to deal with the global financial crisis this week after a previous committee had made little impact despite many public promises.

The main benchmark has fallen about 37 percent since July, compared to 28 percent losses on the Dow Jones.

Angry investors and traders have been protesting outside the stock market and government offices for days, while depositors at Gulf Bank have demanded that the government do more to save their investments, adding pressure on the state to increase aid.

Mustafa Behbehani, a director at Gulf Consulting Co, said that instead of forming ineffectual task groups the government should have cooperated with the private sector and economic experts and taken more concerted action to restore confidence.

"Despite our oil and surplus we face so many problems. A lack of transparency has made things worse. What we need is an emergency team dealing with the situation," said Behbehani.

LITTLE PUBLIC INFORMATION

With stock market rules requiring companies mainly to disclose net profit and earnings per share, analysts say they have trouble assessing the financial health of listed Kuwaiti companies due to a simple lack of published information.

There was no data available for investors or analysts to glean whether other Kuwaiti banks also had risky exposure to currency derivatives -- investments betting on future prices -- like the ones that hit Gulf Bank, analysts said.

"We don't know," said Naser al-Nafisi, a general manager at the al-Joman Center for Economic Consultancy.

"We have asked the stock market many times that companies should not disclose only the bottom line.... Sometimes a stock jumps after the profit statement and then falls after the detailed statement shows a week later that 90 percent of profit was due to an asset sale not operations."

Gulf Bank only last week said in its earnings statement it enjoyed "a robust capital base" without offering any breakdown for units or key business lines, while market leader National Bank of Kuwait, releases key industry benchmarks such as interest income only on an annual basis.

NBK's last detailed profit statement provided figures such as return on assets and return on equity only for the first nine months, while mobile operator Zain gave no comparison figures for its third-quarter profit in its first release.

BIG PLANS

The world's seventh-largest oil exporter has repeatedly said it was committed to diversifying the economy to establish itself as a financial center to rival neighbors Dubai and Bahrain, but analysts are skeptical.

Years of political bickering between parliament and the government have delayed efforts to modernize the economy.

Investment bank EFG Hermes said it expected little progress with Kuwait's economic reforms as only 14 percent of all planned state investments had been actually started or concluded.

"Kuwait continues to suffer from the difficult relationship between the government and parliament as much needed policy implementation is often delayed," regional economist Monica Malik wrote in her latest country report.

Despite the added pressure of the global financial crisis, Commerce and Industry Minister Ahmad Baqer said last week in an interview that the cabinet now saw January as the target date to submit the long-awaited bill to create a stock market regulator.

It had been scheduled for approval last year, which may have better prepared Kuwait for the financial crisis, analysts said.

Even when the bill reaches parliament, analysts say quick approval is far from certain as parliament and government often clash over key projects.

"The government does not understand the seriousness of having transparency on the stock market," said Nafisi.

(Editing by Lin Noueihed and Chris Wickham)