IslamicFinance.de

Saudi Arabia needs 150,000 housing units annually as demand for residential property is soaring, while a long-awaited mortgage law will not solve the top oil exporter's housing problem.
Saudi Arabia, the biggest Arab economy, is facing a massive housing problem due to rapid population growth and an inflow of expatriate workers coming to the kingdom rolling out a $400 billion infrastructure spending plan.
In addition, the country has only a small secondary real estate market, and land prices are higher than in other Gulf Arab states.
Rentals prices for residential housing units would keep rising by some 10 percent annually like in previous years. Saudi Arabia has been working for years on a mortgage law but Harris said the bill, if finally approved, would not solve the problem as there was not sufficient land available for sale and few experienced real estate developers operating.

Shariah-compliant insurance (Takaful) is gaining traction in the Middle East with prospects for insurers to create distribution channels that meet the dedicated clientele needs.
Takaful segment was certainly growing though it was not yet a major component in the global insurance industry.
In Saudi Arabia, many insurers were now offering takaful products, covering life, non-life and personal lines.
Although the growth is slow, a noteworthy feature is that takaful activities have not “stagnated” in the recent past.
On challenges facing the global insurance industry, the sector was still governed by macro-economic issues, which were a fall-out of the economic turmoil. The insurance industry has been hit worldwide; not just in the US or the Eurozone.

HSBC Amanah, the Islamic banking window of banking giant HSBC, is planning to launch its Islamic banking services in full scale in Bangladesh, a visiting top official of HSBC said Tuesday.
With the re-launch, HSBC Amanah in Bangladesh will be the largest presence in South East Asia, the deputy CEO said. Currently HSBC Amanah is operating in the UK, Malaysia, Middle East countries, Indonesia and other countries.
HSBC Amanah products are rigorously audited and approved by HSBC central Shariah committee.

Australia plans to change laws to ensure Islamic finance products are taxed fairly as the government seeks to attract investors from the Middle East and Asia, paving the way for sukuk sales.
The national taxation board will hold talks next month in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne on how to best ensure that Islamic finance transactions are treated the same as equivalent non-Islamic deals. The board noted this month that mortgages that comply with religious principles may lead to stamp duty being paid twice, as the financier buys the property and then sells it to his client. Under a conventional mortgage there is only one sale that attracts the duty.
Australia is looking to join countries from Egypt to South Korea in seeking to ease barriers to Shariah- compliant products and tap the industry’s $1 trillion in assets, which the Kuala Lumpur-based Islamic Financial Services Board predicts will reach $1.6 trillion by 2012.

Jordan's first ever law covering the issuance of sovereign Islamic sukuk has been finalised and bankers and officials hope it will let the kingdom tap the fast-growing Islamic banking industry's huge pool of liquidity.
Prominent Islamic bankers, along with members of a top-level ministerial committee mandated with drafting the sukuk law, said the legislation removes legal uncertainties and would be submitted to the cabinet in as little as two weeks.
It should be passed by year end, widening Jordan's borrowing options beyond conventional public debt instruments and helping finance a growing deficit, worsened by the global downturn and a fall in foreign aid that traditionally covers budget shortfalls.
Jordan has not had special laws relating to Islamic finance, but as Islamic financing expands pressure is mounting on the monetary authorities to apply sharia compliant legislation.
Assets of the three existing Islamic banks in Jordan alone amount to around 12 percent of the total banking system and their financing accounts for over 16 percent of total credit.

Agha & Co (the Firm), a Shariah compliant legal consultancy established by Oliver Ali Agha, commenced operation in Dubai in May 2010 and is scheduled to have a formal office inauguration on October 25, 2010. Previously, Agha and Dr. Saeed Mohammed Al-Shamsi established Agha & Shamsi, an affiliated firm, in Abu Dhabi. The Firm and its affiliate are said to be the first Shariah compliant legal consultancies established globally.
Agha & Co’s strategic position in the UAE, fast becoming a major commercial hub for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), includes a network of affiliation arrangements with leading law firms both internationally.
Agha & Co’s partners have previously lead practice areas at top Am Law 50 and top tier English firms, and are well-respected in the fields of Islamic Finance, Islamic Law, Corporate (including cross-border M&A), Projects, Project Finance, Energy, Public-Private Placements (PPPs), Commercial Transactions, Capital Markets, Islamic Funds & Private Equity, Restructuring, Insurance (Takaful), Arbitration and Dispute Resolution.

Kerala offers huge potential for setting up financial institutions based on Islamic tenets, given its strong historical ties with West Asia and a large Muslim population that adheres to investment norms prescribed by Sharia. Islam prohibits giving or receiving of interest, which it categorises as usury. It does not prohibit trading and investment but advises followers to share risks. It tells the investor to share the loss, just as he would have shared the profit, in case the investment makes a loss. The West has successfully repackaged this investment process as Islamic banking. Kerala is trying to follow that path.

Indonesia is under pressure from banks to match tax breaks and product offerings announced by Malaysia last week to catch up in developing Islamic finance.
Malaysia has the largest market for sukuk and is a global hub for the Islamic finance industry that manages $1 trillion of assets. The government will cut taxes on Shariah-compliant transactions next year to promote “innovation in Islamic securities".
Indonesia failed to sell all of the government sukuk it offered in an auction on Oct. 5, even after suspending sales for two months because investors demanded higher yields than the government was willing to offer.
Malaysia in the past year has issued permits to global investors including Aberdeen Asset Management Plc and Franklin Templeton Investments to start Islamic fund management. The funds, which will invest in ringgit and non-ringgit denominated assets, will be exempt from paying taxes until 2016, according to the central bank.

Saudi firms may launch 10 Islamic bonds, or sukuk, in 2011, more than double their number this year, but they will be dominated by private placements.
Key factors that will spur demand for Saudi sukuk issues will be a low interest rate environment in Saudi and Dubai World's restructuring accord with 99 percent of its bank lenders as well as Dubai's successful $1.25bn conventional bond issue in late September.
Saudi Arabia has had four sukuk issues this year so far, Nisar said, but declined to comment on the expected size of issues and only cited Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and an Aramco-Total joint-venture as being among the prospective issuers.
The interest rate environment in Saudi Arabia -- the main repo interest rate stands at two percent -- might seem discouraging for prospective sukuk buyers.

UAE (Khaleej Times) Initially, the CDs will be available only to fully Islamic banks and then extended to the Islamic banking units of other commercial banks.
The Sharia-compliant instrument, on the lines of Islamic Murabahah transaction will help soak up the excess liquidity in the Islamic money market.
A banker welcoming the move told Khaleej Times that Islamic banks with this offering can invest their surplus liquidity in Sharia-compliant certificates of deposit which will also offer them financial gains.
Malaysia, the world’s biggest market for Islamic bonds, Bahrain and Indonesia sell bills to help soak up cash in the financial system and set benchmarks for short-term bond sales. A Murabahah transaction is a sale and deferred-payment agreement based on an asset in which the cost and profit margin are pre-agreed between a bank and its customer. Transactions in Islamic finance are based on the exchange of assets rather than interest to comply with Sharia principles.

Global Islamic bonds are poised to extend gains after climbing to a record this week, buoyed by Asian economic growth and a pickup in Persian Gulf issuance.
Dubai Electricity & Water Authority, the government run utility, sold $2 billion of non-Islamic senior unsecured debt yesterday in its largest dollar denominated bond sale.
Islamic Development Bank, a Jeddah based multilateral lender, plans to sell $1 billion of bonds this quarter under a $3.5 billion sukuk program, Vice President Abdul Aziz Al Hinai said August 24. Saudi Arabian Oil Co, based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Total SA, based in Paris, plan to sell $1 billion in sukuk this year, Simon Eedle, global head of Islamic banking at Credit Agricole SA, the lead arranger of the sale.

Last year, the emirate issued another $400m worth of sukuk. The government of Dubai in September launched its first sovereign bond issue since a debt crisis.

Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House (GFH) plans to reduce its capital and raise up to $500 million in fresh funds to plug the holes a regional property crunch cut into its balance sheet.
The Islamic investment house said in August it would hold a shareholder's meeting in October to approve plans to raise up to $300m through a murabaha, an Islamic equity-linked money market instrument.
GFH is one of the Bahraini investment houses that relied on fees charged on investor money raised for private equity and property projects, a market that collapsed when the global financial crisis triggered a regional property crash in 2008.
It posted a $728m loss for 2009 and has since struggled to pay back its debt as it failed to sell down illiquid property assets and find a new business model.
It narrowly escaped default in February when it reached a last-minute deal with lender to roll over a $300m loan and now needs to find fresh fund to finish the property projects it started from Morocco to India.

Gatehouse Bank, London-based Shariah-compliant wholesale bank, is planning to launch a £70 million (Dh410m) Islamic bond (sukuk) next month.
In an exclusive interview with Emirates 24|7, Fahed Boodai said the sukuk is targeted at the UK corporates and is expected to be completed in November.
Simon Eedle added that the time is also right for sukuk issuances outside of the Gulf region and he expects more investment money from the West to tap the Islamic finance market in 2011.

The growing demand for securities that meet Islamic religious principles may lead Canadian governments and companies to start issuing Shariah bonds.
HSBC Bank Canada may offer $500 million and three government-related borrowers from one Canadian province may issue $1.5 billion of sukuk, Omar Kalair, chief executive officer of Toronto-based UM Financial, said in an Oct. 14 interview. A “handful” of Canadian companies may sell C$1 billion ($980 million) of Islamic debt by 2013, said Daud Vicary Abdullah, global Islamic finance leader at Deloitte Corporate Advisory Services Sdn. in Kuala Lumpur.
Egypt, Nigeria, the Philippines and Thailand have announced plans to sell their first sukuk in the past three months, partly to tap Persian Gulf oil wealth.

Sharjah Islamic Bank has announced that its profits in the third quarter of the current year reached Dhs191.6m. The lender's balance sheet grew since December 2009 with total assets reaching Dhs16.3bn compared with Dhs16.0bn, the bank said. Total liquid assets increased by Dhs410.2m 12.9% to reach Dhs3.6bn.

Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB.AD) will kick off a non-equity investor roadshow in Asia, Europe and the Middle East on Oct. 20, it said on Monday, amid talks that the lender is planning to issue an Islamic bond, or sukuk.
Last week, sources said ADIB, the second largest Islamic lender in the United Arab Emirates, had mandated three banks to arrange a sale.

Gulf Finance House (GFH), the troubled Islamic investment bank based in Bahrain, wants to raise up to US$500 million (Dh1.83 billion) from investors after declines in Gulf property prices and the fracturing of its business model led to huge losses last year.
GFH was among the hardest hit in the region by the financial crisis and is one of many in Bahrain and Kuwait forced to restructure debts and rethink their methods for raising money, making investments and borrowing.
Shareholders are also to vote on a consolidation of shares through which four old shares would be exchanged for one new.
And the bank will seek a reduction in capital, which observers say will allow it to swallow accumulated losses and start paying dividends immediately after raising new capital. The consolidation would reduce the number of shares on the market but would not affect the company's market value.
Hit by a lack of revenues to finance its operations and pay debts, GFH was forced to reach new terms with creditors on hundreds of millions of dollars of debt.

Persian Gulf Islamic bond issuers are avoiding collateral based on real estate after Dubai property prices plunged 50 percent.
Debt linked to returns from oil fields, aluminum and manufacturing plants are more popular with investors than property.
Defaults by some companies have increased concern among investors about risks associated with Islamic bonds. International Investment Group KSCC, an Islamic financial company based in Safat, Kuwait, said July 26 it was unable to pay $152.5 million to bondholders who demanded immediate repayment after it defaulted on a $200 million Islamic bond.

International insurers seeking a bigger share of the potentially lucrative Gulf market need to adapt quickly to regulatory changes and tap into growth areas like Islamic finance or risk being muscled out of consolidation.
With a penetration rate of around 1 percent of gross domestic product, the overall Middle Eastern insurance sector lags mature markets but its huge growth potential has already attracted global heavyweights such as AXA and Allianz.
However, the sector’s regulatory framework is transforming rapidly and some multinationals remain cautious in developing their Islamic product offering, giving domestic competitors such as Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company, Saudi’s Tawuniya and Qatar Insurance Company the chance to build a dominant position.
Within insurance, the life segment and takaful in particular holds the biggest potential in the region. Premium income in life insurance in Saudi Arabia, for example, soared 61 percent last year, boosted by strong demand for sharia-compliant products, while non-life grew 25 percent according to Swiss Re’s “World insurance in 2009” report.