Reuters Dubai – Gas exporter Qatar and Vietnam have set up a $1 billion fund (56 million pounds) to invest in sectors including agriculture, a Qatar-based newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Qatari sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority QIA.L, will provide 90 percent of the fund’s equity, Gulf Times reported, citing Phung The Long, Vietnam’s Ambassador to Doha.

"We have exchange ideas about setting up an animal farm for breeding cattle and lambs," The Long said. "We like to have cooperation in this field. Qatar can provide the finance to grow food grains in our land and these can be exported to Qatar."

Gulf government funds, with windfall income from energy exports, have set up several joint funds, some designed to improve access to food supplies.

The desert states in the world’s top oil-exporting region rely on imports of food — a factor that has stoked inflation to multi-decade highs this year as global commodity prices soared.

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Wall Street Journal – Eager to keep one of its key employees, publicly traded Fortress Investment Group LLC has lavished a $300 million share grant on one of its star traders, 38-year-old Adam Levinson.

Mr. Levinson, who also is the chief investment officer of one the firm’s main funds, joins the private-equity and hedge-fund giant’s five other controlling shareholders, who together hold some $3 billion of company stock. These executives haven’t sold any shares since the company went public in 2007 and own 77% of the business.

Fortress has struggled mightily in its 18 months as a public company, losing two-thirds of its peak value amid brutal markets for financial firms.

Mr. Levinson’s windfall — which was alluded to in a May filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — highlights the quandary of publicly traded private-investment outfits. On the one hand, they must compensate elite traders and dealmakers richly enough so they don’t leave for a competitor or start their own firms. The heads of large private hedge funds such as Citadel Investment Group and Paulson & Co. can — and have — earned billions of dollars in a single year.

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