IslamicFinance.de

Standard Chartered Bank sees opportunities in Islamic derivative products but is steering clear of hedge funds, another grey area of Shariah-compliant finance, the head of its Saadiq unit said.

Standard Chartered Bank sees opportunities in Islamic derivatives products but is steering clear of hedge funds, another grey area of sharia-compliant finance, the head of its Saadiq unit said.

Dubai is opening up its inaugural hedge fund to investors after an index-beating debut. The Middle East emirate's first fund of funds, which was launched at the beginning of 2009, beat comparable indexes by posting a 41% return last year. The fund, up slightly more than 1% through March 28, is still outperforming benchmarks this year.

Press Release

The report provides investors with an in-depth overview of the various asset classes in Islamic wealth management along with a synopsis of the market scenario during the past 18 months. The report also explores the concept of estate and succession planning, which Sarasin believes is insufficiently addressed in the Islamic finance industry and is a key element of Sarasin’s Islamic wealth management offering. Finally, the report provides an insight into the bank’s economic outlook for 2010.

The key issues and challenges addressed in the report are:

• how Sharia screening reduced the downside in volatile markets and how it affects the finance industry and investors,
• the behaviour of direct real estate investments in comparison with real estate funds and Sharia-compliant real estate investment trusts,
• the income-related role of Sukuk within Islamic balanced portfolios and the probability of defaults,
• a comparison between various Islamic investment funds ranging from income-oriented to commodity, real estate and equity funds,
• the size and future of the Islamic private equity and venture capital industry,
  
  Source: 

  http://www.sarasin.ch/internet/iech/en/islamic_wealth_report-2.pdf

Press Release

Today sees the launch of a new Journal on Islamic finance from dedicated Islamic finance media entity Yasaar Media.

The Journal, called So Far – the Journal of Strategic Thinking in Islamic Finance, is written and edited by members of an Islamic finance Think Tank and is modelled on traditional academic journals. The difference with So Far is that the members of the Think Tank are predominantly practitioners rather than academics.
Member of the Think Tank are drawn from the ranks of committed Islamic finance professionals around the world and range from the Gulf and the Far East to the USA and Europe.

Each issue of So Far is dedicated to a single topic of core importance to the Islamic finance industry – and the launch issue looks at the thorny issue of the problems facing the Sukuk market. Unlike many other journals So Far is distributed free in PDF format and is available from a variety of sources including Yasaar Media thus guaranteeing maximum readership and exposure.

IslamicFinance.de has created a fanpage on Facebook - for all the users wishing to follow the news abstracts on the Facebook platform. Please join and enjoy!

Palisades Park Capital started a multi-strategy hedge fund in November. Justin Doff and Omar Haroon manage the fund. The fund is a computer-based long-short equity strategy.

The Financial Times produced a special looking into the Future of Islamic Finance.

The download is free of charge.