IslamicFinance.de

The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) announces that the monthly issue of the short-term Islamic leasing bonds, Sukuk Al-Ijara, has been oversubscribed by 215%.
The Sukuk Al-Ijara are issued by the CBB on behalf of the Government of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

ABC Islamic Bank announced a net profit of $1.6 million for the nine months ending 30th September 2010.
Shareholders’ equity at 30 September 2010 stood at $181 million.

With trouble at financial institutions in the Middle East concentrated in the Gulf, particularly in the UAE, Kuwait and to some extent Bahrain, the banks know that putting all of their investment eggs in the Gulf's basket makes for inadequate and ultimately dangerous geographical narrowness.
Given the Gulf's unique circumstances, it may make more sense for banks to sell off lines of business where they are weak and acquire parts of other banks where they want to become stronger.

Bahrain-based Tharawat Investment House has distributed more than nine per cent of sukuk profits for its key fund.
The Islamic investment, which was regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain, has announced the distribution of profits for Tharawat Sukuk Fund in excess of 9pc, which became due last month for the first six-month period from February to September.
The announcement by Tharawat of the distribution of profits on time comes against a backdrop of ongoing fluctuations on the world and regional markets, reflecting the strength of the company's performance, its portfolio and sound strategy pursued by the portfolio for generating high returns to its investors.
The fund buys sukuk on the preliminary and secondary capital markets.

Bahrain-based Shari'ah-compliant investment firm Gulf Finance House (GFH) plans to ask holders of its $200m Islamic bond to extend its maturity by three years to 2015 from 2012, as part of its debt restructuring, Reuters has reported.

Dubai-based Minhaj Sharia’h Financial Advisory and Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOFI) have launched a set of 11 new Sharia’h standards for Islamic financial institutions.
Commenting on the launch, Minhaj and AAOFI said these Sharia’h standards will help FIs tackle contemporary issues of banking, finance and investment.
The new Islamic norms have been conceived in the wake of the challenges faced by the Islamic FIs in the current times and paves the way for them to sort out a variety of issues in the light of Islamic jurisprudence.

Albaraka Banking Group BSC, the biggest publicly traded Islamic lender in Bahrain, expects to complete an acquisition in Indonesia in the first quarter of 2011 as part of an expansion.
The bank has identified targets for the planned transaction in the Asian country. Albaraka has also identified an acquisition target in Malaysia.
Albaraka this year acquired Pakistan’s Emirates Global Islamic Bank Ltd., which boosted its network in the country to about 90 branches. It also began operations in Syria this year.
The Manama-based bank has received approval to set up a representative office in Libya to benefit from the country’s strong trade ties with other markets where the bank operates, such as Egypt, Turkey, Algeria and Jordan.
The bank expects total loans to increase 20 percent in 2010.

Elaf Bank, a closely held Islamic investment bank in Bahrain, has applied for a banking license in Malaysia.
The Southeast Asian nation plans to issue two more Islamic bank licenses, including one of a new lender that will be jointly established by institutions from Asia and the Middle East.
Bank Negara Malaysia already issued conventional licenses to five foreign banks in June, including National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Indonesia’s PT Bank Mandiri.
The bank would use Malaysia as regional hub, covering Singapore, Indonesia and Australia.
It would try to use this as an opportunity to converge differing interpretations of Islamic finance between Malaysia and the Middle East by getting Shariah boards to work closely.

The plan to create national Shariah boards to oversee sukuk sales is drawing criticism from bankers and lawyers who say the groups would increase bureaucracy in the $1 trillion Islamic finance industry.
The Accounting & Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, a leading global regulator, is in the final stages of a plan recommending governments appoint panels of scholars and experts at the national level to rule whether products comply with the religion’s tenets, Mohamad Nedal Alchaar, secretary-general of the Manama, Bahrain-based body, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur on Oct. 26. The proposal will be submitted early next year.
The regulator says such a system will help clarify standards and bolster investor confidence in an industry whose assets are forecast by the Kuala Lumpur-based Islamic Financial Services Board to almost triple to $2.8 trillion by 2015. The changes risk adding bureaucratic hurdles and slowing approvals at a time when sales are down 19 percent this year, according to CIMB-Principal Islamic Asset Management Sdn. and Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding LLP.

Bahrain'sc plans to restructure or sell assets to pay back $ 90 million in debt next year, a document showed, highlighting its struggle to meet obligations amid dried-up revenues.
The Islamic investment firm and other Bahraini investment houses have struggled to restart revenue growth, after a 2008 regional property crash pulled the rug out from under their business model of earning fees on investor money raised for private equity and property projects.
GFH posted a net loss of $ 40 million for the second quarter and did not book any income from investment banking services, the main income source during the region's five-year oil and property boom that ended in 2008.
Some large investors have indicated that they may wish to accept land in such projects as their method of exit," she also said. The investor presentation also showed GFH plans to cut its operating expenses by some 40 percent through the reduction of staff costs and funding costs. The firm slashed its staff costs by 66 percent during the first half compared with a year earlier, partly through lay-offs.

Bahrain's Gulf Finance House said on Wednesday its third-quarter net loss nearly quadrupled as the investment firm set aside more money to meet investment and loan losses amid shrinking revenues.
The Islamic investment firm and other Bahraini investment houses have struggled to restart revenue growth, after a 2008 regional property crash weakened their business model of earning fees on investor money raised for private equity and property projects.
GFH, which has restructured two loans worth a total of about $400m this year, said in an investor presentation seen by Reuters it plans to either restructure or sell down assets to repay $90m in term debt next year.
It plans to slash its paid-up capital by about 75 per cent to absorb its losses and raise up to $500m in additional funds through issuing a murabaha, an equity-linked Islamic money-market instrument. The Kuwait-listed shares in GFH have lost about 57 per cent of its value since the beginning of the year.

Arcapita Bank, a leading international investment firm headquartered in Bahrain, announced today that it and its affiliates have successfully completed the IPO of a portfolio of 64 industrial properties in Singapore.
In July 2008, Arcapita’s Singapore-based real estate team entered into a joint venture with Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd, a leading Singapore real estate company, to acquire a diverse, industrial real estate portfolio strategically located in Singapore. The portfolio comprises flatted factories, stack-up/ramp–up buildings, business park buildings and a warehouse.

Capivest, a Bahrain-based Islamic investment bank, will support Jewellery Arabia 2010, the region’s largest and most prestigious jewellery and watch exhibition, as a sponsor.
Jewellery Arabia will be held at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre from October 26 to 30 under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of Bahrain.

Investment manager Argyll Investment Services has launched the World Shariah Funds PCC, a Guernsey-based suite of Islamic-compliant investments which will be listed on the Channel Islands Stock Exchange (CISX) and distributed globally.
This is the first time they have come together in a single offering and strict criteria have been applied to the selection of the companies whose shares are held within the funds. From a ‘basket’ of Shari’ah-compliant companies, a selection is made of those whose earnings are most likely to exceed the market average and the result is an actively-managed portfolio intended to outperform an Islamic equity index.
The fund launch follows Argyll’s participation in the Guernsey Finance presence at the Fund Forum Middle East conference in Bahrain last year at which Legis and the fund’s legal advisers, Ogier, were also present.
Stuart Place, of Argyll, delivered a presentation on ‘Innovation vs. Conservatism: How to achieve results in a post-credit-crunch market’ following which the Guernsey parties were introduced to a Middle East fund promoter.

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.

Leading banks in the Kingdom of Bahrain will come to Washington D.C. on the 8th of October 2010 when the Bahrain Association of Banks (BAB) hosts an important reception at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
The reception is in honour of Bahrain's delegation to the IMF/World Bank meetings. The delegation will be led by H.E. Shaikh Ahmed B?n Mohammed Al-Khalifa, the Minister of Finance, H.E. Mr Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj, the Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain and Mr Abdulkarim Bucheery, CEO of BBK and BAB's Chairman.
The financial community of the Kingdom of Bahrain has shown the depth of its support for the event through sponsorship, which includes Ahli United Bank, BBK Bank Muscat International, Gulf International Bank, Investcorp, Kuwait Finance House, National Bank of Bahrain and United Gulf Bank, together with the Economic Development Board of Bahrain.

The current size of the Islamic finance of $1 trillion could be doubled by 2020. This potential can only be exploited through innovation, diversification and consolidation which will create sustained growth patterns, a top official at the Central Bank of Bahrain told.
The seminar titled Business Models in Islamic Finance: Challenges and Opportunities, was organised by the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) and was sponsored by the Kuwait Finance House (KFH).
As a result, the Governor added, projections of spectacular future growth of the industry which rely on extrapolating the growth trends of the last five or ten years may not be the best guide to the future.

The report pointed out that Kuwait ranked first among the GCC countries in terms Islamic banks assets to total banking assets, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE have risen among the countries that promote Islamic finance products and services. It added that there are many opportunities still available for Islamic finance solutions in the region where real estate finance tops other areas of interest prevalent in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The existence of financial centers in Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE, as well as a number of Islamic finance organizations such as the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, Liquidity Management Centre, and the International Islamic Financial Market will continue to attract new players to the region and further propel the Islamic banking industry to greater heights.

ABC Islamic Bank today announced a net profit of $1.8 million for the first quarter of 2010 compared to $5.6 million for the first quarter of last year.

Commenting on the results, Mr. Naveed Khan, Managing Director, said, “ABC Islamic maintained a positive operating result in the first quarter of 2010 despite de-risking of the balance sheet and conservative provisioning on impaired assets from the previous year. This has been in line with Group and parent policy. However the bank is well poised for future growth as its capitalization ratio has a healthy cushion for selective growth.”

Bahrain's Islamic lender Al Baraka yesterday said it planned to enter the Saudi Arabian market through an acquisition of an Islamic investment company there, valued at around 300 million Saudi riyals ($80m). Al Baraka did not disclose the name of the Saudi firm it planned to buy, adding it would reveal further details after gaining official approval. The Al Baraka Banking Group has a wide presence in the form of subsidiary banking units and representative offices in 12 countries, which in turn provide their services through more than 300 branches. Al Baraka had signed a share swap deal with Saudi Investment in 2007 but scrapped the deal in 2009 blaming the global financial crisis.