IslamicFinance.de

Gulf Investment Corporation GSC Kuwait (GIC) had on Tuesday, March 1 issued its first local currency Sukuk amounting to RM600 million in the Malaysian market.
The GIC stated that this would be its third bond offering in Malaysia.

National Bonds Corporation has announced a profit of 3.78 per cent for its bond holders despite a challenging year in 2010.
The CEO of the leading Shariah compliant saving scheme in the UAE, discussed a variety of subjects concerning the National Bonds and their customers as well as plans for 2011 and beyond.

Referred to as the Bursa Malaysia Sovereign Shariah Index (BMSSI), the new Malaysian ringgit sukuk index was developed with the help of the Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia (Aibim) and will form part of Bloomberg's Islamic Finance Platform which seeks to leverage on the growing demand for information for syariah-compliant products and services.

Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (DJIM) suffered the largest losses in February. Political crisis and civil unrest in Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, escalating even to a civil war like in Libya, weighed on the markets.
The turmoil led the DJIM Kuwait Index to drop 8.64% . DJ Dubai Financial Market (DFM) Titans 10 Index lost 4.83%.These declines stand in stark contrast to the rise in energy prices, which usually lift Middle Eastern markets.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services placed its 'BBB' long-term counterparty credit and insurer financial strength ratings on Bahrain-based insurer Takaful International Co. BSC on CreditWatch with negative implications.
This rating action follows the recent downgrade of the long-term local currency sovereign rating on the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Kuwait's Investment Dar has proposed some $1.69bn in asset sales over three years to creditors as part of a $3.58bn restructuring plan, Reuters has reported, citing banking sources.
Dar will sell its stakes in Kuwait's Boubyan Bank and Bahrain Islamic Bank.

Deutsche Gulf Finance, a joint venture between Deutsche Bank and a group of Saudi investors, won the “leader in Islamic Home Finance” award at a recently concluded building and infrastructure summit in Riyadh.
The summit also addressed the infrastructure and real estate market within the Kingdom.

Conventional banks were allowed to have Islamic operations to help them have diversified sources of revenue and make the local banking industry more competitive.
Islamic banks in the country had small capital base then and that was another reason why their conventional counterparts were permitted to offer Islamic banking services.
Abdullah bin Khalid Al Attiyah thinks that the banks dispensing credit should rely more on their own judgment and risk managing abilities than on the directives of the QCB.

National Bank of Abu Dhabi is ready to launch conventional and Islamic Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, but is waiting for the right time to go ahead.

Gatehouse Bank plans to bring a $96.77 million Islamic bond to market by the end of the first quarter.
Richard Thomas, speaking on the sidelines of an Islamic forum in Abu Dhabi, said the bank would also arrange a 25-million pound ($40 million) syndicated lease financing this year.

Qatar Charity (QC) has launched a drive to alleviate the sufferings of tens of thousands of people in Libya in the wake of the current unrest in that country.
The target sum of the campaign has been pegged at QR3.5mn. Aid materials, especially medicine and food, would be bought from Egypt.

The issuance by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) of a directive requiring the country’s conventional banks which have opened Islamic banking windows (IBWs) to close them down by the end of 2011 may result in operational complexities in the implementation of the directive.
Both Professor Rifaat Abdel Karim and Islamic bankers such as Richard Thomas agree that the complexities lie with trying to match short-term deposits placed with the IBWs with their longer term liabilities.

Some economists and bankers in Bahrain blamed the hesitant approach of the Central Bank of Bahrain for failing to identify problems in the country's banking sector in the lead-up to the crisis. That is the oppinion of WikiLeak.
The alleged cable was sent on November 24 2009 by Joseph Adam Ereli, the United States' ambassador in Bahrain to the US Secretary of State.

Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority has authorised Takaful International Company BSC ("TIC") to establish a branch within the Qatar Financial Centre.

British lender Barclays Bank has appointed Dominic Selwood as a director responsible for its Islamic products services.
Selwood joins Barclays as a director in the Financial Institutional Structuring Group (FISG) and is currently based in London.

The political conflict that has spread to Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Morocco will make it more expensive for companies to issue Islamic bonds in the region and in Malaysia. The Asian nation is attractive to borrowers because of its lower yields.
But spreading unrest across the Middle East may be encouraging Shariah-compliant investors to increase purchases of Asian assets and will spur sales of Islamic bonds.

Dubai Islamic Bank has been assigned an 'A' rating by Fitch Ratings, the New York and London-headquartered global ratings agency.

Board Members and Management of The Investment Dar Company K.S.C.C. and the Coordinating Committee met with TID's Banks and Investors in Kuwait to provide an update on the Company's restructuring process.
At the meeting, TID's Banks and Investors were presented with the headline terms of the agreed ESP, as previously disclosed together with illustrative business, operational and governance plans for its implementation. Updates were also provided on individual assets and outstanding issues.

Barwa Bank, the Qatar-based Islamic finance house, is thinking about a plan to make its trading debut this year.
Barwa CEO Steve Troop indicated that Qatar’s recent decision to terminate the Islamic finance operations of the country’s conventional banks was an “exciting move”.

Bank of London and The Middle East (BLME) has received a licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) to open its regional office in the Kingdom.
LME provides a wide range of services and advice to businesses and individuals, with a strong focus on Europe, the Mena region, as well as the US.
The opening of the Bahrain office, BLME’s first overseas office in the Gulf region, reinforces its ambition to provide a bridge between the UK and the GCC to offer a range of investment opportunities to the global investment community.