Mofid Securities, Iran’s largest independent brokerage and financial advisory company, has entered into a major new agreement with Azimut Group, one of Europe’s leading asset managers. The agreement will see Azimut take a 20% stake in Mofid Entekhab, the asset management business of Mofid Securities, as Azimut and Mofid seek to bring a higher standard of asset management offerings to the Iranian market for both domestic and foreign investors.
The new deal makes Azmiut the first global financial institution to make an equity investment in an Iranian financial services company. It comes at a time when Iran’s financial services sector has made recent headway in reconnecting with global counterparts. New financing deals with Austria’s Oberbank and Denmark’s Danske Bank and an announced commitment from French bank BPI suggest that more foreign capital is set to flow to Iran in 2018, so long as the possible snapback of secondary sanctions does not take place. Similarly, investor appetite has grown with investment companies deploying foreign capital in Iran’s public and private equities in historic volumes.