'Vast improvement in business environment'

Sri Lanka can be a regional leader in areas such as logistic, tourism and many service industries and can be positioned as a gate way to South Asia, same as Hong Kong to China, Thailand to Malaysia and Indonesia said the CEO of Leopard Capital Asia, Douglas Clayton. He was addressing the ceremony held to launch Leopard Capital Sri Lanka, a new private equity fund, in Colombo last week.

Leopard Capital Sri Lanka is a joint venture between Orion Capital Partners in Sri Lanka and Leopard Capital of Hong Kong. The new private equity fund expects to raise US$ 100 million from foreign investors.

We have set up a similar private equity fund in Cambodia. It was in 2008 and just after the global financial crisis started.

However, we have to continue the project and so far we have raised US$ 39 million and we got lot of experience from the project. When we were looking for the second country we saw Sri Lanka as a potential place especially after the business environment improved with the end of the war. Sri Lanka is becoming an attractive place for global investors, he said.

The Chairman of Leopard Sri Lanka, Ranjit Fernando said that With the advent of peace Sri Lanka can anticipate an unprecedented growth in the economy. Many private companies which have traditionally depended on bank funding and retained earnings will be faced with either having to surrender the growth opportunities to foreign companies with capital, or to conglomerates with capital.

Leopard Sri Lanka will assist in supporting this growth capital requirement among mid sized Sri Lankan companies. (GW)