IslamicFinance.de

The Investment Dar Co. K.S.C.C. ("TID") and the Coordinating Committee of banks and investors ("Coordinating Committee") of TID and the Investment Dar Bank ("IDB") are pleased to announce that they have received the support of over 2/3 of TID and IDB banks and investors for the restructuring plan presented in Kuwait City and Dubai on November 24 and 25. As a result, TID and the Coordinating Committee are proceeding with the final implementation of the proposed restructuring plan and are aiming to complete this process as quickly as possible.

Infrastructure spending is still a major growth driver in the Gulf Co-operation Council countries, with current projects valued at a whopping $2.6 trillion, but alternative funding schemes need to be explored as the global economic crisis is stifling commercial lenders, experts said.

In order to standardize and harmonize Shariah compliance mechanism in IBIs, it has been decided that above AAOIFI
Shariah Standards are adopted in Pakistan. In the first phase, AAOIFI’s Shariah Standards No.3 (Default in Payment by a Debtor), No.8 (Murabaha to the Purchase Orderer), No.9 (Ijarah & Ijarah Muntahia Bittamleek) and No.13 (Mudaraba) have been reviewed and are hereby adopted for IBIs in Pakistan. The adoption of these Standards shall, however, be subject to certain clarifications and amendments as given in the attached Appendix- A. IBIs are also advised to be prepared for adoption of other AAOIFI’s Shariah Standards in next phases.

The Constituent General Meeting of Al Baraka Bank Syria was held in Damascus on 16 December 2009 in the presence of the founding shareholders or their representatives and representatives from the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, Central Bank of Syria, the Commission for Securities and Financial Markets and other representatives of concerned public authorities and bodies.

A UN Food Agency is co-operating with Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to help advance agriculture in poor countries.

Kuwait Finance House (M) Bhd (KFH) has refuted YNH Property Bhd’s claim that it is in a legally binding agreement with the latter and can be made liable for backing out of a deal to purchase Menara YNH, a 45-storey office tower worth RM920mil.

Gulf Finance House (GFH), the leading Middle Eastern Islamic investment bank announced today that the Board has appointed Mr. Ted Pretty as Group Deputy CEO of the Bank.

The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, today announced the setting up of a tribunal to decide the disputes related to the settlement of the financial position of Dubai World and its units reported Bloomberg, citing a statement from his the ruler's press office.

The Secretary-General of OIC, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu has underscored the need for both inter-OIC cooperation and international partnership to enhance the popularization of knowledge-based economies in OIC countries.

The World Bank plans to support standard-setting bodies of the Islamic finance industry in turning their voluntary standards into binding banking regulations.

Bahrain's emergence as an Islamic banking hub has spurred Tamkeen to put in place an ambitious plan to train 130 Bahraini graduates in Islamic finance and business accounting.

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

The download is free of charge.

Excerpt from the IMF report
"Which group of banks is better-positioned to withstand adverse shocks?
With larger capital and liquidity buffers, Islamic banks are better-positioned to withstand adverse market or
credit shocks. On average, Islamic banks’ capital adequacy ratio (CAR) in the GCC is higher than that for
conventional banks (except in the United Arab Emirates). The risk-sharing aspect of Shariah-compliant
contracts adds to this buffer as banks are able to pass on losses to investors."

page 10, 11

Full Text for free download.

Yasaar media published a new report called Islamic Finance in North America 2009 for free download, which is co-published by Codexa Capital, UM Financial Group, King & Spalding, and Doha Islamic.

According to the report Islamic finance in North America has developed along two quite separate paths:

• The first path focuses on retail Islamic finance and centres mostly on home financing products and credit cards.

• The second path involves a number of high profile GCC-based Islamic investment banks and their deployment of hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity and real estate developments in North America.

Read the full report for free at the link below.

Quantis was founded recently to provide expertise in responsible Islamic finance combined with quantitative methods by Marwan Muhammad and others.

http://www.quantislam.com

Investors from Dubai are negotiating with government officials of Malta on a number of assets and projects in the Mediterranean island state. Dubai has already become a leading investor in Malta's economy with investments totalling near USD 1 bn over the last few years including the USD 300 mn SmartCity project, Euro 500 mn in International Hotel Investments (IHI) Group which owns Corinthia Hotels, as well as Tecom Investments' acquisition of a stake in Maltese telecom operator Go, with many more to come.

IslamicFinance.de installed on 18 April a new service to keep you updated with Islamic finance news by sending its content to a Twitter account allowing to follow news even by mobile phone, Wikipedia the online encyclopedia explains Twitter as follows:

"Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). [...] Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees." Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Please feel free to use just another free service related to IslamicFinance.de by following the news via Twitter:

Go to: http://twitter.com/IslamFinance

New Horizon reported that other IT vendors now think about certification by the Accounting and Auditing Organisation of Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) and following the example of Path Solutions.

Joint Press Release

Riyadh ? London, February 2 2009

Saudi Credit Bureau (SIMAH) and Standard & Poor's, the leading provider of financial market intelligence, independent ratings, indices, investment research and data across the Middle East?s credit risks launched today the National Data Pooling Project (NDPP) and signed a contract in Riyadh. SIMAH was represented by its General Manager Mr. Nabil Abdullah Al-Mubarak, Standard & Poor?s by Mr. David Pearce, Managing Director of McGraw-Hill International (UK) Ltd and Mr. Bernard O?Sullivan, Managing Director and Head of Standard & Poor?s Risk Solutions in Europe, Middle East & Africa.

In this context, Nabil Al-Mubarak stated that the project comes as the final step in the framework of specialized projects for measuring credit risks, which would enable all participating member banks to fulfill all requirements of Basel II capital adequacy issued in 2005, referring to the fact that the Kingdom has already been implementing Basel II Capital Standards since 2006, and welcoming at the same time the strategic relationship with Standard & Poor's.

Dear Members,

Please share your opinion about the following proposal in regard to

- Academic Research Papers

This forum could facilitate to publish your research papers and having them rated by peers afterwards. This would speed up the time from production to publishing tremendously compared to traditional journals.

It also gives a chance to see unusual papers published, however, a good number of submissions might be of lower quality at the same time.

The action question: Is there interest in the community to use such a platform in this way???

Please comment!!!