IslamicFinance.de

The Kuala Lumpur-based Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) plans to develop guiding principles for capital markets and insurance, seeking to encourage regulatory consistency across new and established markets, its secretary general said.
The new guidelines from the 188-member IFSB, one of the main standard-setting bodies for Islamic finance, will complement existing ones which cover commercial banking.
A wider set of standards could assist the International Monetary Fund which plans to include Islamic finance in its surveillance work, known as the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP).
"Before the FSAP there has to be a set of core principles and that really is the instrument that we feel is going to point the way and facilitate consistency across borders," IFSB secretary-general Jaseem Ahmed told Reuters.
The standards on capital markets and Islamic insurance (takaful) would complement regulatory guidance from the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS).

The US and Canada are expected to follow London's lead with the development of Islamic insurance products. Not just because of the burgeoning market for Shariah-compliant financial products worldwide but also because of increasing demand for old-fashioned transparency.

So says James Bagshawe, a member of the executive committee of the recently established Islamic Insurance Association of London (IIAL) and COO of UK-based Cobalt Underwriting.

Earlier this month, the London Market pointed to the growth of commercial Shariah-compliant products as an important example of the innovation required by London to maintain its position as a global insurance hub. At the inaugural conference of the IIAL in Dubai, chief executive of the International Underwriting Association (IUA), Dave Matcham, said that Islamic financial activity in London is developing a growing maturity and said the IUA and IIAL are cooperating to support the trade in Islamic insurance, promoting standards and transparency.

A new international bond and grant scheme to help countries dealing with the fallout of war and instability in the Middle East and North Africa should be in place by spring, a senior World Bank official said.
In a Reuters interview, Hafez Ghanem, the World Bank's vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, said the type of investment targeted by the plan - education, infrastructure and jobs - was vital to addressing the region's refugee crises. He said that humanitarian aid alone was not enough and the alternative was “one or two lost generations” in a region with 15 million refugees or internally displaced people.

Following are major Islamic bond issues in the global pipeline.
The Thomson Reuters Global Sukuk Index is at 117.30055 points, down from 118.24280 at the end of last month but up from 115.79726 at the end of last year. The Thomson Reuters Investment Grade Sukuk Index is at 115.33833 points against 116.64293 at end-October and 113.69014 at end-2014.

More than 1200 distinguished guests from more than 45 countries and 300 organizations participating this December, Bahrain

Key players from the global Islamic finance industry will be participating with the 22nd annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) 2015, taking place on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of December at the Gulf Hotel, Bahrain. Focusing on 'New Realities, New Opportunities', WIBC will play host to more than 1200 leaders including Central bank governors, regulators, C-suite bankers & asset managers, policy makers, Fintech entrepreneurs and contemporary thought leaders.
WIBC 2015 will host 5 central bank Governors and deputy governors and feature speeches and discussions by the Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain, H.E. Rasheed Al Maraj, the Executive President of the Central Bank of Oman, H.E. Hamood Sangour Al Zadjali, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, Riaz Riazuddin and the Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Nurlan Kussainov.

Banking and financial services sectors in the GCC are actively seeking opportunities beyond their borders triggering a number of cross border mergers and acquisition deals in recent years.
Domestic markets focus of GCC banks has limited the scope for expanding their business. While this has benefited local banks in increasing their banking penetrations in the economies that they are based in significantly, it did take away from the potential to grow outside their boarders and broaden their geographic reach. This is an important point particularly as domestic markets will have limits to their potential. Expanding beyond their borders is one channel for GCC banks to add value to their business models.

Pakistan International Airlines Corporation (PIA) recently announced the successful closure of its US$ 120,000,000 Secured Syndicated Islamic Facility.
Citibank and Mashreq Bank PSC acted as joint initial mandated lead arrangers, bookrunners and coordinators for the facility. The transaction received an overwhelming response from the market and was over-subscribed.
The syndicate comprised of a diverse set of banks spread across GCC and South Asia. The participating banks included Askari Bank Limited, National Bank of Pakistan, Noor Bank PJSC, United Bank Limited and Warba Bank KSCP as mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners, Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam Berhad as lead arranger and Bank Alfalah Limited as arranger. This transaction once again reiterates the multitude of synergies developing between the Middle East and Pakistan.
The facility carries a tenor of three years and will be utilized to support the Company’s ongoing strategic growth plans and general corporate purposes.

The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) and International Shari’ah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA) have successfully organised a Shari’ah Roundtable themed, ‘Financial Safety Nets: Striking a Balance between Shari’ah Requirements and the Soundness of the Islamic Financial System’. The Roundtable was held on 5 November 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The Roundtable aimed to provide a platform to Shari’ah scholars, legal practitioners, regulators and market players for having in-depth deliberations on key aspects of financial safety nets such as Lender of the Last Resort (LOLR) and Deposit Insurance Schemes from the Shari’ah perspective.
Over 70 delegates from nine jurisdictions among the IFSB members and non-member organisations – representatives from market players, regulatory bodies, and international agencies – Shari’ah scholars as well as academia attended this Roundtable.

JP Morgan's clients have bought around 3 % shares of Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd or IBBL over the past several years, officials said. The US-based banking firm bought the shares for its institutional and indi-vidual investors. The shareholding empowers JP Morgan to hold a post in IBBL's board of directors as the law allows a shareholder to become a director in a publicly-listed company in Bangladesh with a stake of 2 %.
“The market plunge that began in December 2010 in Bangladesh has attracted foreign investors to buy IBBL shares,” MA Mannan, managing director of IBBL, told The Daily Star.
“JP Morgan's investment in IBBL shares reflects our strength.”
The current market price of IBBL's total shares stands at Tk 4,508 crore -- at over Tk 28 a share as of yesterday. Presently, IBBL has nearly 161 crore shares, with a face value of Tk 10 per share. If the current market price of IBBL shares is taken into account, JP Morgan's holding of 3 percent shares is valued at over Tk 137 crore. JP Morgan is one of the largest asset and wealth managers in the world with assets under its management worth $1.7 trillion (as of December 31, 2014).

SINGAPORE's nascent Islamic finance industry is finding it tough going amid volatile financial markets and depressed oil revenues.
So far this year, there has been only one sukuk, or Islamic bond, deal in a fairly brisk fixed-income market which saw 136 bond deals worth S$17.7 billion sold in the first nine months of 2015 - Malaysia's mortgage lender Cagamas Bhd sold a S$163 million sukuk in September. The lack of a natural pool of Islamic funds in secular Singapore is a major barrier to sukuk launches, according to Clifford Lee, DBS Bank head of fixed income.
"And so you try to sell in other markets which need education (leading to) higher costs; if you're a strong issuer, the conventional bond market is more than ready to meet your needs," explained Mr Lee.
Islamic finance bans interest, products with excessive uncertainty, gambling, short sales and the financing of prohibited activities considered harmful to society. The strongest indicator that it's not smooth sailing for Islamic finance players here came in September when DBS Group Holdings said it will be winding down its Islamic banking unit, which it said has been unable to achieve the necessary economies of scale.

Malaysian telecoms giant Axiata Group on November 13 issued a US$500 million Wakala Sukuk, or Islamic bond, to fund its investment into a Myanmar towers business. This is the largest-ever corporate bond issued with proceeds to be invested into a Myanmar towers business, demonstrating considerable investor confidence in the frontier market. Telecoms towers companies have led the way in terms of innovative cross-border financing into Myanmar – last year Pan Asia Majestic Eagle completed the first cross-border, non-recourse financing arrangement in the country.
A spokesperson for Axiata told The Myanmar Times yesterday that around $125 million of the bond’s proceeds will be used to fund the acquisition of a majority share in Myanmar Tower Company (MTC) under Axiata’s wholly owned subsidiary Edotco Group.
The remaining funds will be used for “general corporate purposes,” she said, though did not disclose whether or not this would include capex for MTC’s Myanmar rollout. In the bond’s prospectus the use of proceeds is listed as “general corporate purpose/other”.

Aberdeen Asset Management plans to launch a new Islamic compliant fund to invest in overseas assets in the first quarter of next year, president director Sigit Pratama Wiryadi said on Thursday.
Aberdeen, a local unit of the Scottish fund manager of the same name, will be among the first funds in Indonesia to take advantage of recently loosened Financial Services Authority (OJK) rules allowing local fund managers to include foreign assets in portfolios. An OJK regulation issued last week announced managers are now permitted to invest between 51 and 100 % of shariah mutual fund products in overseas securities — from bonds, to stocks and currency.
Bharat Joshi, investment director at Aberdeen, said the fund manager would look for assets in Asia Pacific, the United States and Europe to include in the new fund. Aberdeen currently manages around Rp 2 trillion ($147 million) of the country's equities and bonds. The fund has previously said it is looking to increase assets fivefold over the next five years.

Luxembourg for Finance and QInvest are hosting an Islamic finance workshop next week in the European country to debate some of the pressing themes in the Shariah finance industry.
The event, which will be held November 24, will bring together investment fund professionals, bankers, corporate houses and industry practitioners to discuss sukuk issuance and ways of promoting the Shariah bond market as well as the emergence of Islamic high yield financing as an alternative.
The workshop will have presentations from several senior officials of QInvest as Hani Ibrahim, head of Debt Capital Markets; Alexander Armstrong, head of Financial Institutions and Structured Finance; and Dr Ataf Ahmed, head of Asset Management.
They will be joined by Luxembourg and international panellists, including the chief executive of Luxembourg Stock Exchange.

The Borsa Istanbul Private Market, a year-old platform for bringing companies and investors together, is a leading example of Islamic finance, the exchange’s CEO Tuncay Dinc has said.
Speaking at the G20 forum on Islamic finance on Wednesday, Dinc said: “The Islamic finance approach to risk- and profit-sharing makes it an important resource for investors who seek the greater security that this kind of finance affords.”
Islamic finance, which does not involve charging or paying interest, uses a model in which trade is backed by real assets and money is merely a medium of exchange rather than a commodity to be traded.
Under this system, the funds invested are used on a profit-and-loss sharing basis under models known as musharakah – a joint enterprise where risk and rewards are shared rather than interest paid on a loan – and mudarabah, where one party supplies funding and an agent manages a specific trade.

Emerging markets must create the valid legal conditions and a “level playing field” to gain access to Islamic finance at the international level, Zamir Iqbal, the head of the World Bank Global Islamic Finance Development Center, has told Anadolu Agency.

“Islamic finance uses the techniques of securitization. This means that a good enabling environment for structured finance is needed”, Iqbal said, while speaking at a G-20 forum on Islamic finance in Istanbul.

Securitization, or structured finance, is the process of taking assets that produce income and using them to create security. In Islamic finance, all securities are linked to income-producing assets.

Turkish Islamic bank Albaraka Turk has received initial pricing feedback in the 10 % area for a potential U.S. dollar-denominated sukuk issue which would bolster its supplementary or Tier 2 capital, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
The lender has received indications of interest totalling over $250 million, including those from joint lead managers, for the ten-year non-call five sukuk, the sources said. A potential deal is expected early next week subject to market conditions, they said.
Albaraka Turk, a unit of Bahrain-based Al Baraka Banking Group, has chosen Barwa Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank, Emirates NBD, Nomura, Noor Bank, Standard Chartered and QInvest to arrange the sukuk issue.

The Board of Directors of Jaiz Bank Plc has approved the appointment of Mahe Abubakar as the acting Managing Director/CEO of the bank. He succeeds Muhammad Nurul Islam, whose two-year contract ended on November 17, 2015.
Until his appointment, Abubakar was an Executive Director in charge of Business Development. A statement by the Head, Corporate Communications Department of the Bank, Idris Salihu described Abubakar as an astute banker with over 20 years cognate experience.
Before he joined Jaiz bank, he was a General Manager/ Group Zonal Head of Zenith Bank Plc in charge of the Northwest region. His wealth of experience is expected to impact greatly on Jaiz Bank's business development drive. Abubakar has a Master Degree in Business Administration from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and he is a qualified Dealing Clerk of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
He had attended several trainings in and outside Nigeria including High Potential Leader: Accelerating Your Performance at Wharton School, Pennsylvania, USA; High Performance People Skills, London Business School; and Senior Management Programme, Lagos Business School.

Speakers at a conference have urged the financial institutions and civil society to play their role by supporting an inclusive financial sector policy framework for equal access to financial services.
The workshop, which was attended by the scholars of Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Sudan and US, is focused on bringing forth recommendations that will help in devising sustainable strategy for development of inclusive finance.
The two-day moot is jointly organised by International Institute for Islamic Economics of IIUI in collaboration with Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.
Speaking on the occasion as the chief guest, Islamic International University Islamabad President Dr Ahmed Yousif Al-Draiweesh stressed on the Muslim economic researchers to work for devising strategies for an interest-free transparent economic system. He was of the view that financial issues be observed in the light of Islamic teachings. The IIUI president hoped that conference would bring beneficial and significant recommendations pertaining to the financial and economic issues.

The Islamic Development Bank wants to use Islamic bonds to help finance the reconstruction of countries ravaged by conflict, with the World Bank as a potential joint issuer, the head of the multilateral lender said.
Refugee and reconstruction financing is a priority for the Jeddah-based IDB, which last month launched an initiative with the World Bank and United Nations to help more than 15 million people displaced across the region.
Work is now underway to identify specific projects for the initiative, with a priority on war torn Yemen, which could see the IDB and World Bank as issuers of the sukuk.
"We need to finalize this with the World Bank, but most likely it will be a joint issuance", IDB president Ahmad Mohamed Ali said on the sidelines of an industry conference in Kuwait.
The IDB, which operates to promote economic development in Muslim communities, has 56 member countries including Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran as its largest shareholders.

There is no misappropriation of funds by the Malaysian Islamic Economic Development Foundation as the organisation is self-funded.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki said the foundation "is an independent organisation and does not receive any grants from the Government" and tied to its trust deed. "Even the minister has no power in their matters", he said in his ministry's winding up speech for the 2016 Budget.
Asyraf said the foundation was not only formed to do charity work but to uplift the economic status of Muslims. He said the charity work was funded by its own systems such as ar-rahnu, which has generated an income of up to RM83mil to date. Asyraf said the foundation's total income to date was RM1.034bil.
Stressing that the funds are managed by the board of trustees, Asyraf said it has the liberty to decide as it an independent organisation. "If YaPEIM wants to invite a minister and pay for his cost, then that is its right. "The amount spent by YaPEIM for Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom is merely 0.0063 % of their annual income," he added.