IslamicFinance.de

Delhi-based Transworld Consultants, a company specialising in laws in the Gulf states, has come out with an English version of the New Islamic Insurance Law of Oman. According to the Chief Executive Officer of Transworld Consultants, Syed Saami Mahmood, the new 58-article Law provides that the companies conducting the Takaful insurance business have to be listed on the Muscat Securities Market with a capital of RO 10 million and above. Mahmood said that the Law does not permit traditional underwriters to open Takaful insurance windows, making it mandatory for a company interested in doing the Takaful insurance in Oman to devote itself exclusively to the Islamic insurance business.

Uganda’s Muslim leaders have condemned the “ignorance” of church leaders trying to block Islamic banking legislation in the majority-Christian nation. Earlier this year, parliament amended a finance bill to introduce Islamic insurance. However, church leaders led by Archbishop Stanley Ntagali, head of the country’s Anglican church, has urged President Yoweri Museveni to reject the legislation. Nsereko Mutumba, spokesman for the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council, said the church leaders were just ignorant of the Quran, it has nothing to do with ISIS, Boko Haram or any other group claiming to kill non-Muslims. The Bank of Uganda is currently establishing a sharia advisory board to regulate and supervise Islamic banking.

Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) has appointed Datuk Mohaiyani Shamsudin as chairman of Maybank Investment Bank and Datuk R Karunakaran as Chairman of Etiqa Insurance Bhd (EIB) and Etiqa Takaful Bhd (ETB). Maybank said the changes in chairmanship of its key subsidiaries followed the retirement of some directors. Mohaiyani is currently a director of Maybank. She is also the chairman of Maybank Asset Management Group Bhd and Maybank Asset Management Sdn Bhd. Karunakaran is a director of Maybank and currently sits on the boards of Maybank (Cambodia) Plc, and others. In addition, he is a director of Bursa Malaysia Bhd, IOI Corporation Bhd and Integrated Logistics Bhd.

Kuwait Finance House (KFH) has received an offer from investors to buy its stake in affiliate Aref Investment Group, the country's biggest Islamic lender said in a bourse statement on Monday. Aref is a diversified investment firm which is 53 percent owned by KFH and has share capital of $400 million, according to information on the companies' websites. This offer is currently under study and no decision has been taken as yet, the statement said. KFH will disclose this offer in the event that they have reached and signed a preliminary agreement, and cannot currently determine any financial impact on its statements in the absence of an agreement as yet.

A group of several prominent entrants in the crowdfunding sector will announce the formation of a new Islamic Crowdfunding Alliance or ICF Alliance on April 1st. Umar Munshi, founder of eThis Crowd (Singapore), M. Raafi Hossain founder of Narwi (Qatar), Erly Witoyo, founder of Kapital Boost (Singapore), Matthew Martin founder of Blossom Finance (Indonesia) and Rachid Ouaich partner of EasiUp (France) will participate in the launch event and press conference being held in Malaysia. The founding platforms number nine in total. The event will discuss upcoming plans of the ICF Alliance to address the needs of the growing industry of crowdfunding platforms that cater to Muslim needs.

So much money was pouring so rapidly into the Malaysian Prime Minister's personal bank accounts that it rang internal money-laundering alarms inside AmBank. Hundreds of millions of dollars were being wired into Najib Razak's accounts from the Saudi Arabian Government, a mysterious Saudi prince and two shadowy British Virgin Island companies, while the head of a Malaysian state-owned company topped up the Prime Minister's credit card accounts with millions of Malaysian ringgit in cash. Inside the bank, the Malaysian Prime Minister's account was held under the codename "Mr X". The startling new banking records have been obtained as part of a Four Corners program that aired last night, and which resulted in the arrest of two members of its team.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has requested comment on a draft guidance document that for the first time addresses the responsibilities of regulators and supervisors in the context of financial inclusion. Given the potential impact of this guidance on regulators around the world, Daniel M. Schydlowsky was invited to review and comment. Dr. Schydlowsky is a fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the former head of the Superintendency of Banks and Insurance Companies of Peru. The draft guidance issued by the Basel Committee describes numerous particular situations that supervisors have to confront and suggests responses.

One of the main challenges for the first GNU social Camp was to develop an alternative to the centralization of the collaborative economy using GNU social, a free standard for the development of distributed web applications. Sharings—a plugin for GNU social— creates the possibility of adding objects and services to GNU social to share them with the users on your node or, if they’re on other nodes, connected to you through federation. Sharings is still in alpha, but it already allows you to share objects, and other users can show interest in the object that you’ve shared and get in contact with you to agree on the details of the exchange.

QInvest L.L.C. has announced the acquisition of ERGO Portfoy, one of the largest and fastest growing asset management companies in Turkey. Following the completion of this acquisition, QInvest Asset Management will have assets under management close to $1 billion. ERGO Portfoy has been rebranded as QInvest Portfoy and is a subsidiary of Qatar’s QInvest. The senior management of QInvest Portfoy will remain with the firm and will be led by Mr. Murat Vanli, the General Manager of ERGO Portfoy, and will continue to operate from Istanbul. The company has been granted its license to operate by The Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB) and is licenced to offer portfolio management to both individual and institutional investors.

The Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI) of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group has signed an agreement with Al-Manhal, a provider of electronic scholarly publications, to host IRTI's Islamic finance publications in Al-Manhal electronic databases. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) provides for electronic versions of IRTI's publications--including books, reports, training manuals, and conference proceedings--to be made available to Al-Manhal subscribers that include universities, government agencies, corporations, and public libraries. IRTI Director General, Prof. Mohamed Azmi Omar, and Al-Manhal representative, Mr. Rany Al Baghdadi, jointly signed the MoU at the IDB Headquarters in Jeddah.

The United States is not standing in the way of foreign banks doing business with Iran, a senior U.S. official said, but his comments appeared unlikely to satisfy frustrated businessmen and Iranian officials. Most international sanctions against Iran's economy were lifted in January after Tehran implemented a deal with world powers to curb its nuclear programme. But Washington kept some sanctions that were originally imposed over missile proliferation and alleged support of terrorism. The fear of being caught up in those remaining sanctions has deterred most foreign banks from restoring links with Iran, angering the Iranian government.

Islamic bond sales are off to a racing start this year as Malaysia plans to tap the market following Indonesia’s $2.5 billion issue, which was more than three times oversubscribed. Global sukuk offerings of $11.3 billion are already 30 per cent more than the first quarter of last year and are approaching the $12 billion for the same period of 2014. Malaysia reportedly selected JPMorgan Chase, CIMB Group, Malayan Banking and HSBC to arrange investor meetings for as early as the end of next week. In a sign of the demand that Malaysia’s government debt is attracting, a 4 billion ringgit ($998 million) sale of 10-year local-currency Islamic notes on Wednesday garnered a bid-to- cover ratio of 3.2 times.

The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and Mardi Holdings of Malaysia are interested in investing in the agriculture sector of Suriname, according to the CEO of Mardi, Anas Nasrudin, who met with farmers in Suriname this week. The Islamic Bank and Mardi Holdings are seeking joint ventures in agriculture and food production. Besides rice, they have shown an interest in herbal products, coconut, pineapple, and the palm oil industries of Suriname. Mardi Holdings and the Islamic Bank will assist Suriname to tap the Hallal market globally, assisting in standardisation, accreditation, certification and adoption of the Hallal industry.

A global survey on the Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) of the Global Islamic Wealth Management Industry conducted by Edbiz Consulting revealed that the global Islamic wealth management industry is facing a trust deficit that is hampering the growth of the industry. 48% of the respondents said they have never used any Islamic wealth management products and services, citing lack of understanding, lack of trust and preference to manage own wealth as reasons for not subscribing. Dr Sofiza Azmi, Group CEO of HD-Edbiz Group of Companies highlighted that 40% of Islamic wealth is concentrated in non-Muslim countries.

Dubai Islamic Bank returned to the international debt capital markets with a very successful $500 million 5Y Sukuk issue yesterday. This deal is the first GCC bank issuance since November 2015 and essentially marks the reopening of the market after a hiatus of 4+ months. The transaction is being hailed as a tremendous accomplishment in the current environment where the GCC has gone through a well-documented change in onshore liquidity conditions and witnessed multiple rating downgrades, which have been mainly the result of the drop in oil prices. The offering was oversubscribed (2.4x) attracting more than $1.2 billion in demand from 87 investors.

Insurer Tokio Marine Egypt General Takaful plans to increase its investments in the country by 56 percent in the financial year 2015/16 to 46.8 million Egyptian pounds (5.3 million), its managing director said. Satoshi Furuya further said that the group's investments had surged to 30 million pounds by the end of the financial year 2014/15. Tokio Marine Egypt General Takaful's investments are Shariah-compliant, notably in governmental bonds, treasury bills, in addition to deposits in investment accounts with Islamic banks, Furuya added. The company is part of Japan-based Tokio Marine Group.

National carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) is seeking to raise 5 billion riyals ($1.3 billion) via the first tranche of a sukuk isuance programme in the second or third quarter of this year, its director-general Saleh al-Jasser said. The funds will be used to finance fleet expansion, as the carrier aims to operate 200 aircraft by 2020. Details of the second tranche of the sukuk programme have not been determined, he added. The airline has been spinning off units in the last several years; it is now preparing documentation to hive off its cargo unit in an initial public offer of shares, Jasser said without giving details.

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), arrangements between government agencies and private sector companies or investors to provide and maintain public assets and services are increasingly becoming popular, particularly in developing countries, to create infrastructure, utilities and healthcare facilities. In most cases, governments rely on the provision of private funding in exchange for fiscal benefits for the sponsor in the absence of sufficient sources of debt and equity financing on their own. Islamic Finance has evolved as an untapped source of funding for cash-strapped governments seeking alternative sources to invest in critical infrastructure and services.

Kuwaiti financial firm Investment Dar has begun talks with creditors about a new 813 million dinar ($2.7 billion) debt restructuring plan after a court threw out an earlier attempt. Investment Dar, whose main assets are in finance and property, has made several efforts to pay off creditors after getting heavily indebted during the financial crisis. Its most recent plan, dubbed Dasman, failed last month when Kuwait's Court of Appeal rejected an application under the country's financial stability law to impose it on all creditors. This resulted in a company-organised creditor meeting on Tuesday, attended by around half of its roughly 80 creditors. It was reported that both sides agreed to discuss a fresh restructuring deal, which could be proposed to creditors in the coming weeks.

As the mutual fund industry has developed, in more recent years it has witnessed the growth of sharia-compliant funds (SCFs) and socially responsible funds (SRFs). Although both classes of funds employ certain screening criteria, there exists a distinction between them. The International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance examined the performance of socially responsible funds against shariah-compliant peers. The results suggest significant underperformance of both types of funds against the market, suggesting that the screening has a negative impact on them. However, SCFs managed to do slightly better than SRFs.