Bahrain's Gulf Finance House (GFH) said on Wednesday its third-quarter net loss nearly quadrupled as the investment firm set aside more money to meet investment and loan losses amid shrinking revenues.   

The company said net loss in the quarter ended September 30 was $115.1 million, compared with a net loss of $29.3 million in the year-earlier quarter.

Impairment allowances for the quarter were $81.5 million, GFH said, while total income for the quarter shrunk to $633,000 compared with $3.2 million in the same period last year.

For the nine-month period ended September 30, GFH reported a loss of $162.8 million, compared with $121.4 million last year.

The Islamic investment firm and other Bahraini investment houses have struggled to restart revenue growth, after a 2008 regional property crash weakened their business model of earning fees on investor money raised for private equity and property projects.   

GFH, which has restructured two loans worth a total of about $400 million this year, said in an investor presentation seen by Reuters it plans to either restructure or sell down assets to repay $90 million in term debt next year.

It plans to slash its paid-up capital by about 75 percent to absorb its losses and raise up to $500 million in additional funds through issuing a murabaha, an equity-linked Islamic money-market instrument.

The Kuwait-listed shares in GFH have lost about 57 percent of its value since the beginning of the year. - Reuters