Over recent months the FDI in Iraq has jumped 241% to $156.7 Billion.

The foreign Investment in Iraq from around the world has been as follows:

2009

UAE: $37.6 bn

S.Korea: $24.7 bn

USA: $22 bn

UK: $10.5 bn

Lebanon: $10.1 bn

The biggest jump has been made by oil and gas.  Since 2003 it was real estate.  But since their 1st and 2nd oil licencing rounds have made a dramatic increase in the countries revenue and investment.

Energy investment into the country has been $73 billion so far this year.  You may remember i previously wrote about a company called Gulf Keystone (GKP) which has established itself in northern iraq back in 2007 and is taken advantage of Iraqs energy supply.  Last week it was annouced that it found oil, which is predicted to be between 12 and 15 billion barrells of Oil.  The shares have increased dramatically the past several months from lows of 0.03p earlier this year to a year high of £1.24.  Currently trading today at around £1.12

A recent interview on CNN with exectuive chairmen Todd Kozel was quoted in saying “In Kurdistan we have discovered about 25 million barrells of oil a day for a $30million dollar well, our 2 current projects combined in Algera are $70 million barrels to our interest”

They will need $120 million cash injection to help fund their ongoing project.  Todd Kozel has said “we are pretty much the most popular guys right now, we have all the attention we need right now, our institutional share holders are very supportive and thats where we will probably where we will go to raise that capital”

In 6 months time Todd reckons “initially Gulf Keystone will be an independent company but later down the line it will be more difficult to keep up with it financially HR, Technology, Engineering.  Weve got hold of something that is as big as Gulf Keystone right now but we are growing into it quickly”

Share holders today dumped their shares after hearing Sainsburys are to call for more shares to be brought to market which will dilute the current value of their current share price, which caused a panic of share dumping.  Their share price went down 7% today sit 23½p to 308¼p.

Sainsbury will gain £445m for bringing out more shares in the hope to get more cash.  Analysts say the stocks value will go down around 3%.  Many investors are worried that Qatari shareholders will start to offload their stake causing a tidal wave effect.

Rival Morrisons fell 1p to 243¾p while market leader Tesco fell 7.6p to 354p.  Not a good day for food chains.

Workspace Group (WKP) which lease office space to small to medium sized businesses (SME) released full year results this morning causing a 1.7% increase in the share price this morning despite a fall in the FTSE driven down by miners.  Current FTSE price is 4389.32 down -49.82.

Workspace reported a pretax loss of £360.4 million for the year ended March 2009, compared with a loss of £37 million a year earlier.

Panmure Gordon rate this company stock as a “BUY”

Panmure describes Workspace’s results as “encouraging”, saying they met its forecasts, and that it is maintaining its 2010 forecasts for the group.  This is promising for a commercial property company during this time, which will give hope for investors.

Workspace are also paying a 0.50p dividend to share holders making this an attractive stock to hold and will make current share holders happy.

The broker says despite the challenging nature of property markets in recent times, the company continues to see resilience in both demand and the cash rent-roll.

“Furthermore, with the business significantly de-risked following the rights issue, debt-restructuring and ongoing disposal programme, we see good potential upside for the business when the London property market turns,” says Panmure

Current Share Price – 14.86p

Broker Rating – “BUY”

NAV – 27P

Final dividend of 0.50p per share proposed