Crescent hopes to launch the fund by the end of the year. The fund will invest in a variety of sectors including agriculture, infrastructure and alternative energy.

Paul Homsy, chief executive of Crescent, says he sees a lot of potential for Middle East investors in the Latin American region and that the firm has already received a great deal of interest from Middle East investors.

He adds: “One of the challenges of doing Sharia-compliant private equity is that most deals are highly leveraged but, to fit within Sharia guidelines deals, can have no more than 30 per cent debt to equity ratio.

"But in Latin America most deals are done entirely with equity, which makes structuring them in a Sharia-compliant way easier.”