Qureshi is co-chairman of the firm, the emerging market partnership, that manages four funds with a total of 4.6 billion dollars devoted to seeking profits amid emerging-market turmoil.

Defying Qureshi's initial scepticism, the first Asia fund (a poll of 1.1 billion dollars) has put one-fifth of its money into India, says the Washington Post. Though he criticises India's stifling attitude toward the private sector, he said, in an interview, that the privatisation of the cellular communications industry provided attractive investment opportunities.

He was upbeat about the fund's prospects for profiting from them. With partners such as Bell Canada. Emerging markets partnership fund invested in seven of India's dozen cellular markets, becoming the country's largest investor in the field.

The emerging markets partnership was launched in 1992 by Qureshi and fellow World Bank executive Donald C Roth, with encouragement and financial backing of American international group Inc (AIG), the insurance giant. Another key investor in the first fund was the China international trust and investment corp, (CITIC), a company under the wing of Chin's state council.

Little did he expect that markets from Jakarta to Seoul would plunge into turmoil, throwing Asia's economy into reverse. The picture in those markets today, Qureshi admits now,``is one of widespread devastation,'' and his funds have not come through unscathed. We can ride out the storm,'' Qureshi said.

Indeed, Qureshi and his investors are relatively lucky, says the daily. His funds weren't fully invested when the turmoil first struck in the summer of 1997. About a third of the initial Asia fund a 1.1 billion dollar pool, hadn't been invested before October of that year. A second Asia fund, with 1.7 billion, dollars had just finishedraising its money right around that time less than half of one billion dollars Latin America fund has been invested so far.

A new fund, a one billion dollars facility aimed at infrastructure investments in the Islamic world, just closed this month.