Bahrain Middle East Bank (BMB) said it has distributed $1.46 million to its investors across various investment holdings for the quarter ending December 31, 2012 despite challenging and unfavourable market conditions.

With this, the Bahraini bank has till date distributed $20.7 million to its private equity fund investors since a new management took BMB in 2009.

This is the thirteenth consecutive quarterly distribution from the bank despite challenging and unfavourable market conditions, it added.

Commenting on the distribution, CEO Akbar Habib said, "This extra-ordinary feat remains testament to the vigorous and relentless endeavours as undertaken by the present management to restructure the bank which was facing many challenges which included - amongst other - an obsolete and third-party dependent business model."

At present, the bank has been transformed to encompass multiple-line business platform that has achieved remarkable success as evident by its consistent and sustained net positive operating performance over the last three years.

"This has been duly recognized by Fitch who recently upgraded BMB's Outlook to Positive - which puts the Bank at its highest ever rating in its history. Therefore, we now look to the future with a great degree of confidence and optimism," he added.-TradeArabia News Service