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Dubai Holding, a conglomerate owned by the emirate's ruler, and Kuwait's Al Fajer Re plan to launch a Emirates Retakafulfirm with $500m of authorised capital in January to tap unserved demand in retakaful. The new firm, Emirates Retakaful, will be set up in the Dubai International Financial Centre, said Fareed Lutfi, director of insurance services at Dubai Holding. There will be scope to add more investors to the firm, he added. Emirates Retakaful will focus on covering general takaful business, such as oil- and aviation-related risks, and later explore family takaful risk.

Abed Al Zeera has been removed with immediate effect from the board of European Islamic Investment Bank (EIIB).

Power cables and wires manufacturer Ducab has taken a strategic initiative to convert its conventional metals hedging practices into Islamic structures. The ultimate objective of this initiative is to persuade global metal exchanges to adopt the product as one of the standard traded offerings. This new hedging opportunity was placed under the spotlight at the 2013 Global Islamic Economy Summit, which took place on 25 and 26 November, as Ducab seeks to promote the Sharia-compliant hedging to other major companies in the MENA region.

The Islamic fund industry manages about $46 billion, only a tiny part of the total global asset management figure, which stands at $60 trillion. The issues that need be addressed for the Islamic asset management and investments to grow were discussed at the first Global Islamic Economy Summit 2013. Performance of the funds is key to bringing in clients, both institutional and retail. In a region, such as the GCC, where the retail component is extremely small, funds have to ensure capturing all the sectors in the market. Moreover, savings ratio in Muslim countries is low and awareness of mutual funds among retail groups is very low. With an attractive performance and support from the sovereign funds and pension funds and the governments, the sector may grow substantially.

The Islamic Finance market has an estimated market of around Rs 300 billion and with the operation of currently five commercial licensed banks, three finance companies and other institutions, Sri Lanka’s total deposit base is nearly Rs 35 billion and the total loan base is Rs 24.8 billion. In Sri Lanka the Banking Act No 30 of 1988 was amended in March 2005 to accommodate the concepts of Islamic banking. Major banks such as HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank ABN Amro have dedicated Islamic Banking subsidiaries or Islamic Banking windows. Islamic finance is considered a key opportunity to bring in funds via different agencies, countries and foreign currencies. Introducing new Shariah-compliant instruments and products is important for expanding the Islamic finance industry in the country.

Draft Islamic banking and insurance regulations have been prepared in Morocco and could be passed by parliament before the end of next year. Morocco has been seeking to develop Islamic finance for about two years, partly as a way to attract Gulf money and fund the huge budget deficit. The government originally planned to issue its first sovereign Islamic bond this year but that plan appears to have been delayed. The Islamic finance laws could clear the way for Morocco to see its first conventional bank with an Islamic window, as well as sukuk issuance by private firms. Two or three private firms could tap the market fairly quickly after the laws are passed.

The Central Bank of Bahrain yesterday announced that the monthly issue of the Sukuk Al Salam Islamic securities for the BD36 million issue, which carries a maturity of 91 days, has been oversubscribed by 102 per cent. The expected return on the issue, which begins tomorrow and matures on February 26 next year, is 0.85pc, compared with 0.85pc for the previous issue.

The European Union will maintain sanctions against all but two Iranian firms that won challenges to the bloc's sanctions regime in EU courts in September. The EU will on Wednesday formally announce it is maintaining sanctions against almost all the firms by "re-listing" them for new sanctions breaches. The EU hopes that by re-listing companies and providing additional evidence, it can secure its Iran sanctions regimefor the foreseeable future.

The Islamic Bank of Britain has launched two Sharia compliant buy-to-let products. The first of the products is a two-year fix available to those with a 25% deposit at a rate of 5.09%, fixed until 31 December 2015. The second two-year fix is available at 65% LTV at a rate of 4.69%. An administration fee on £995 applies and both products provide finance of between £30,000 and £500,000 across the UK and £750,000 in central London. The products have no early repayment charges for clearing the finance in full. The provider said the loans are available to landlords of any faith.

Private investors from Gulf Arab countries plan to establish the first full-fledged Islamic bank headquartered in the euro zone. The investors aim to launch the venture, named Eurisbank, in Luxembourg during the last quarter of 2014. With initial capital of EUR 60 million, the bank would offer retail, corporate and private banking services, and would open branches in Paris, Brussels, the Netherlands and Frankfurt. In addition to the royal family from the UAE, Eurisbank will be owned by a bank from a country in the GCC and other private investors. The founders of the bank plan to apply for a license in January and expect to obtain regulatory approvals by April.

After Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) deployed logistics pipelines to transport emergency food products and other crucial relief items to the affected areas. Providing food is a major component of the emergency relief effort in the worst-hit areas. WFP has to date dispatched high energy biscuits and rice to three million people in Tacloban, Ormoc and Guiuan. In other areas, where power is on and markets open, WFP will support recovery with ‘Food for Assets’ programmes or cash transfers. Donations are welcome to fund the programmes. Find WFP's latest situation report attached; you can also learn more about WFP’s emergency response in the Philippines on the website wfp.org.

Thomson Reuters today released its new “State of the Global Islamic Economy” report, which represents the global Islamic economy as core sectors and their ecosystem structurally affected by Islamic values driven consumer lifestyle and business practices. Collectively the majors sectors of Islamic economy identified and covered in the Report are: Islamic finance & Insurance, Halal food, and Islamic values influenced travel, clothing, pharma / cosmetics and media recreation sectors.
If you would like to view the full report please click on: http://www.ocdasylum.com/ftpdir/TR_SIE_report.zip
For a high resolution copy of the info graphics please click: http://www.ocdasylum.com/ftpdir/TR_SIE_print_HR.pdf
For a low resolution copy of the info graphics please click on: http://www.ocdasylum.com/ftpdir/TR_SIE_digital.pdf

The CMA Board has issued its resolution approving the offering of Saudi Electricity Company's sukuk. The total offering size will be determined at a later stage by the Company. The prospectus will be published to the investors in due course.

Dubai is in talks with Islamic endowments, or awqaf, in other countries to promote its drive for the industry to become more efficient and profit-oriented. Dubai wants to become a centre for modernising awqaf and coordinating their activities in order to make them more financially successful. The Emirate plans to establish an international body during the first half of next year that would handle cooperation with other emirates and countries. It would be managed jointly by members and include non-awqaf charities that operated in similar ways. In March, Dubai said it was launching the new asset management firm NoorAwqaf that would specialise in handling awqaf assets. With 10 million dirhams ($2.7 million) of paid-up capital, the new firm would offer services including due diligence, financial analysis and assisting awqaf to develop their strategic objectives.

Malaysia Building Society Bhd. (MBSB) will sell the nation’s first covered Islamic bonds to be backed by receivables, offering RM495 million of the debt next month. The sale will be the first portion of a RM3 billion programme announced last month and will be issued by Jana Kapital Sdn, a special-purpose company. The securities have been assigned an AA1 ranking by RAM Rating Services Bhd in Kuala Lumpur. The offer is part of the company’s strategy to expand its business and to cut costs to sustain earnings growth. The company will report record profits this year as its nine-month net income of RM464 million has already surpassed 2012’s full-year total of RM446.7 million.

Standard Chartered Saadiq (Saadiq) and Credit Guarantee Corp Malaysia (CGC) have collaborated to launch Malaysia’s first Islamic portfolio guarantee (PG) scheme to provide financing to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country. The term-financing facility, which offers financing from RM100,000 to RM800,000 over a flexible financing tenure of between 12 and 84 months, is expected to benefit about 400 SMEs within the next one year. Up to RM200mil will be offered under the Islamic PG agreement between Saadiq and CGC. Under the agreement, CGC would guarantee 70% of the approved total principal amount undertaken by SMEs and assist to verify the credibility of applicants in consultation with Saadiq. The scheme is expected to have a shorter turnaround time in terms of approval and disbursement to enable SMEs to gain quicker access to financing.

According to Kuwait Finance House (KFH) CEO Mohammed Al-Omar, the continuous increase in profit over five consecutive quarters underlines the success of the restructuring process and the management's decision to focus on main operations to achieve sustainable profit, offer better returns to shareholders and depositors, and easing burden off the institution. He explained that that a rearrangement of the real estate portfolio is occuring, to benefit from current developments in the real estate market, in terms of rates and shifting to certain kinds of real estate and land. Furthermore, Al-Omar noted that the strategy that KFH adopted regarding its overseas banks, has played a role in cementing their roles and making them more profitable.

Ooredoo QSC has mandated DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, QInvest and QNB Capital to act as joint lead managers and Bookrunners for a proposed US dollar Reg S benchmark Sukuk offering. The offering is expected to be launched, subject to market conditions, following investor roadshows starting 22 November covering Asia, Middle East and Europe.

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) will release a list of Shariah-compliant stocks this month to draw Muslim investors to the stock market. PSE tapped a third-party consulting firm to assist the exchange in selecting companies that will be part of the list. The PSE is on the first year of a three-year plan to expand liquidity by offering more products and services. The PSE has been introducing new products including real estate investment trusts (REITs) and exchange traded funds (ETFs) to boost volumes. For next year, the PSE should attract the same number as this year’s initial public offerings (IPOs), mainly from the consumer-related and infrastructure sectors.

Noor Islamic Bank (Noor) announced a waiver on all remittance charges for clients wishing to send money to relatives in the Philippines, in the wake of the Super Typhoon Haiyan. In addition, the Islamic bank has said that any of its corporate clients wishing to donate funds to the Philippines relief effort will have the processing charges waived. The decision to waive remittance and processing charges will remain in place until December 31, 2013. Individuals and organisations must have a Noor bank account to take advantage of the zero charges.