IslamicFinance.de

Bangladesh has launched an Islamic interbank money market, having the purpose to help sharia-compliant banks administer their short-term funding.
Apparently the market would supply Islamic banks with a channel to use surplus money. Islamic banks are responsible for over 15 percent of the country's banking sector.
This will help banks who apply Islamic sharia will have the possibility to overcome any funding crisis like the conventional banking system.

It seems that Qatar's Masraf Al Rayan is in talks to become the biggest shareholder in Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB).
The bank stated that Masraf Al Rayan will access 70% of the bank and the government of the state of Qatar will have the remaining 30%.
The bank noted that it would also get hold on "two major share portions of two Qatari companies operating in the industry of maintenance of oil and gas fields", subject to approval from authorities.

A $13.3 million operating lease agreement was signed by Gulf Aviation Academy (GAA) with Tadhamon Capital for a new A330 full flight simulator.
The signing ceremony succeeded at GAA's facility in Muharraq where GAA chief executive Mahmood Al Balooshi and head of finance Moath Al Shaikh got together with Tadhamon Capital chief executive Waleed Abdulla Rashdan and executive director Ahmed Hatam Sultan.

It seems that the U.S. Treasury Department set sanctions on the Syria International Islamic Bank for supposedly acting as a front for the Commercial Bank of Syria.
SIIB gave permission to the Commercial Bank to circumvent the measures against it by the U.S., European Union and Arab League.
Treasury claimed that financial arrangements purportedly made by SIIB were actually done by the Commercial Bank itself.

An agreement was signed by Al Baraka Banking Group with the World Bank in order to launch joint programmes under a set of new Shari'ah-compliant finance initiatives.
The programmes have the purpose to foster sustainable development of Islamic economics and finance, through the design and delivery of activities like identifying and disseminating sound practices in the Islamic financial services industry.

MUSLIM Australians will have the possibility to deposit their cash with today's launch of Crescent Wealth's first Islamic cash management trust, which has the purpose to attract up to $100 million during the next few years.

International Polymers Company (IPC), hastaken signed a Shariah compliant SR1.4 bln (US$373 mln) loan from Saudi banks, Riyad Bank, National Commercial Bank, Saudi Hollandi Bank, and The Saudi British Bank.
The funds will sustain the project financing of a production plant currently being built in Jubail Industrial City.

Sharjah Islamic Bank has signed a cooperation agreement with the University Hospital Sharjah to provide financing packages to patients, facilitating payment treatment fees to the University Hospital in convenient installments.
The agreement was signed by Dr Omar Abdul Hamid, Consultant of His Highness Ruler of Sharjah for Higher Education Affairs, and Mohammed Abdullah, CEO of Sharjah Islamic Bank.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has engaged in its first Shariah-compliant project financing, offering assistance to two projects to build wind farms close to the port city of Karachi, exploiting two partial credit guarantees valued up to $66 million to the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).
The Fauji Foundation, which is the majority stake holder in the two projects had demanded that all financing be acquired in compliance with Shariah principles, so ADB used an innovative structure in which it supplied a partial credit guarantee to half of the IDB financing.

It seems that Dubai Islamic Bank has issued a $500 million (Dh1.8 billion), five-year sukuk sale after gaining good request.
Helping arrange the Regulation S transaction, after DIB met fixed-income investors in Asia, Middle East and Europe over the past few days, are: Deutsche Bank, DIB, Emirates NBD, HSBC and National Bank of Abu Dhabi.
Fitch Ratings assigned to DIB's $2.5 billion trust certificate issuance program a ‘A 'expected rating.

According to a top central bank official, the United Arab Emirates needs a centralized body for the Islamic finance industry to assist in developing its sukuk market further.
Saif al Shamsi, assistant governor for monetary policy and financial stability, noted that the law calls for a central sharia committee at the federal level that would work with sharia boards at the corporate level but that has not been enabled yet federally.

National Industrialization Co (Tasnee) and Sahara Petrochemical Co have engaged a 5.09 billion riyal ($1.36 billion) loan with nine local banks to fund development of three new factories.
Operations at Saudi Acrylic Monomer Company, Saudi Acrylic Acid Co and Saudi Superabsorbent Polymers Co in Jubail Industrial City on the kingdom's Gulf coast, are arranged to begin in the first quarter of next year.

Aproximatly 100 investment projects worth 300 billion roubles have been introduced at the 4th International Summit in Kazan.
The organizers of the forum were the government of Tatarstan, the Islamic Business & Finance Development Foundation (IBFD) with the support of the Federation Council of Russia.
The summit is attended by thousands of guests from over 30 countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation including: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Turkey, the UAE, Oman, Pakistan.

Thomson Reuters will add leading Islamic scholars and bankers to the supervisory bodies of the Islamic Interbank Benchmark Rate (IIBR), expanding geographic and community representation on both the IIBR Shariah Committee and Islamic Benchmark Committee.
The new members will offer credit to IIBR as a viable alternative for pricing Islamic instruments and implanting Islamic finance authenticity.
IIBR is set up to provide an objective and dedicated indicator for the average anticipated return on Shariah-compliant short-term interbank funding and an alternative to the conventional interest-based benchmarks used for mainstream finance.

Call for Manuscripts and Papers

Volume-I

Impact Philanthropy and Investing

Connecting Innovation with Ground Realities*

A volume in the Academy of Philanthropy

International Perspectives on Philanthropy Series

The first Journal from the Academy of Philanthropy will use the recently held Global Donors Forum 2012 as a platform for a focus on Impact Philanthropy and investing with a particular focus on impact and accountability in Muslim Philanthropy. This is an invitation to contribute manuscripts or papers for this first Journal. Full details on the areas of interest and how to submit material may be found below.

*Based on the nature of submissions the subtitle may be adjusted accordingly.
Call for Manuscripts and Papers
Volume I : Impact Philanthropy and Investing
A volume in the Academy of Philanthropy International Perspectives on Philanthropy Series
Editor: Dr. Yunus Sola, Director, Academy of Philanthropy, London and Chicago. ysola@thewcmp.org

La Zakat et les Banques
Ecole de Management Strasbourg
26 mai 2012
Dans le cadre du programme de recherche « Banques
et Finance Islamique » soutenu par l’Agence Nationale
de la recherche, un colloque « La Zakat et les
banques » est organisé le 26 mai 2012 à l’Ecole de
Management Strasbourg.
L'implantation annoncée de diverses institutions
financières islamiques en France, ainsi que la volonté
affichée de banques françaises de développer cette
finance, se heurteront assurément à certaines
difficultés qui trouvent leur source dans l'intégration
en droit français d'obligations de droit musulman telle
que la Zakat. Outre une présentation du régime de la
Zakat, l'objectif retenu est de s'intéresser à l'insertion
de la finance islamique et de la Zakat en France, et de
tenter d'apporter des réponses aux questions qu'elle
ne manquerait pas de soulever.

The National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) has launched its Sukuk Income Fund, a unique product investing in Sharia'h-compliant investment instruments that provides investors attractive returns with low levels of risk.
The NBAD Sukuk Income Fund represents an open-ended and actively managed product aiming a profit rate of 5% based on current market conditions. It is for institutional and individual investors who can invest as low as USD500 either through lump sum or regular savings plans.
The Fund is intended to catch the best opportunities available to investors by investing in a range of Sukuk and money market investments that are launched by the UAE Government.

The former chief executive and founder of Bahrain's Bank Alkhair has lost a civil court allegation in the kingdom which chased to strike down his dismissal by the bank, the latest round of a legal battle between the two parties.
The judgement is the latest development in a series of legal cases following Al-Refai's departure from the bank.

Temenos revealed that United Installment Sales Co. Ltd. (UIS) and Lexus & Daihatsu in Saudi Arabia, has signed an agreement to utilise Temenos’ market leading core banking solution, T24, for its Islamic Real Estate Financing & Vehicle Leasing transactions.
The latest version of T24 contains significant enhancements that allow Temenos to improve its Islamic Banking offering, including Sharia-compliant automated workflows, permitting Islamic Banks to streamline processes such as booking Murabaha, Mudaraba, Istisnaa or Ijara contracts with enhanced operational efficiency.

The Sahulat Microfinance Society, a National NGO working for the financial inclusion through cooperative based microfinance, will lead a national consultation on “lnterest Free Microfinance through Cooperatives: Challenges and opportunities”.
The keynote speaker will be Prof. Dr M S Swaminathan. The Consultation has the purpose to focus on steps to defeat the practical hurdles in registration process of interest-free Microfinance Cooperative societies all over the country.