IslamicFinance.de

The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) is not planning to arrange a national-level Sharia board to manage the proposed specialised Islamic banks and window operations of commercial banks.
Hamoud bin Sangour Al Zadjali, executive president of CBO told Times of Oman, stated that they will probably demand from the individual banks to set up separate boards and will count on them to take the right judgement on devising (Sharia-compliant) products.

Islamic banks in the country Malaysia have been encouraged to present more short-term syariah-compliant products in order to attract foreign investors.
Dr Mohd Daud Bakar, Amanie Islamic Finance Consultancy and Education LLC managing director, stated that they always have investors in Malaysia looking for syariah-shariah compliant products.
He added that liquidity is not a problem in Malaysia because they have many products that can absorb the liquidity in the Islamic financial intuitions.

Unicorn Investment Bank launches its new brand identity, as it has now officially changed its name to Bank Alkhair B.S.C. (c). The Bank’s subsidiaries in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Turkey will now officially perform under the names Alkhair Capital Saudi Arabia, Alkhair International Islamic Bank Malaysia and Alkhair Capital Turkey respectively.
Furthermore, the bank presented a streamlined and more modern logo and brand elements, in keeping with Bank Alkhair’s re-aligned and more focused approach and operating strategy.

Real Estate Department at Kuwait Finance House will participate in the real estate and investment expo organized by Top Expo Group at the Fair Ground. KFH will introduce its financing services for all kinds of real estate, such as residential, investment, commercial, and industrial for local real estate; in addition to financing real estate in most countries worldwide.
Furthermore, KFH presents clients the possibility to acquire real estate in Bahrain through Murabaha and Ijarah.

It seems that Barclays Capital will have its attention on growing its liquidity management and risk management businesses as the Islamic bond market continues to have problems because of global economic worries.
Barclays will launch an Islamic structured notes programme in the near future.
Barclays will also develop its Islamic liquidity management offerings, such as repurchase agreements (repos), to markets such as Africa where Islamic finance is anticipated to grow.

Standard & Poor’s talkes about how Sharia-compliance affects the analysis of the creditworthiness of insurance companies that follow Islamic religious principles. Sharia-compliant takaful and cooperative providers have lately started to battle aggressively with traditional insurers and reinsurers.
The rapid growth and multiplication of these new entrants has been influential, but has more than once brought into question the stability of their business model.

Maybank Islamic Bhd anticipates its contribution from asset financing to the Maybank Group in the current financial year to be consistent with the previous year.
At this point 27 per cent of Maybank Group's total loan and advances come from Islamic banking.

An agreement between Damaan Islamic Insurance Company (Beema) and Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) was signed, to provide its customers a suite of innovative Takaful solutions.
This means that QIB will be offering its customers Beema’s Takaful products, which cover all customer needs be it motor insurance, retirement plans, children education plans or simple savings-cum-investment plans or protection plans. Futhermore, it will give Beema’s ‘Individual Takaful Plan’.

It is possible for Turkey to appear as a key market for Islamic finance while Asia continues to drive the industry’s growth but markets are still evaluating the full impact of the global downturn on the sector.
Because of the recent growth of the sector together with the launch of several Islamic funds and a law granting tax neutrality to sukuk products, it is tought that Turkey will be the next growth market for sharia finance.

The first project-based Sukuk will be offered by Indonesia in an auction on Oct. 11. This act will raise the supply of Sharia instruments in the less-developed local Sukuk market.
The ministry will launch project-based Sukuk with maturities of six and 21 years, six-month Sharia T-bills, and 14-year and 25-year Sukuk, with a total target of 500 billion Indonesian rupiah (56 million Us dollars) in the last Sukuk auction this year.

The third Islamic microfinance organisation to implement Farz methodology, after the NGO World Foundation and AAS Foundation Bahawal Nagar Pakistan is Islamic Saving & Credit Cooperative of Cameroon.
Islamic Saving & Credit Cooperative of Cameroon is dedicated to reach out to the poor of Cameroon through Islamic financial products developed by Farz Foundation.

It appears that the mainstream Islamic finance industry has not directly got involved in the sector in any important way.
The Jeddah Declaration for the Achieving Food Security for example has mandated the IDB to allocate more resources to the agricultural sector, which any is a key component of the ordinary approvals of the group's regular financing facilities.
There are distinguishing exceptions especially in countries that are primary agricultural commodity producers and exporters including Turkey and Malaysia.

Ratings agency A.M. Best stated that reTakaful companies are having problems keeping to their original business plans. It seems taht the Takaful market has not grown as quickly as expected and Takaful operators have found themselves having to battle with the large conventional insurers on price.
The Takaful firms were using conventional reinsurers, otherwise like specialist reTakaful firms, in order to keep their costs low, as the conventional reinsurers offered the cheapest protection.

Malawi's Vanguard Life Assurance is placed to introduce their so called first Shari'ah compliant pension fund.
The fund will invest in conventional investment vehicles that do not put in jeopardy Shari'ah stipulations.

The hosts of the 2nd Annual Islamic Finance Forum were US-Qatar Business Council and the Bilateral US-Arab Chamber of Commerce. They presented much-needed insights into the growing use of Islamic financing and Shariah-compliant business contacts in the United States.
The forum was held at the George Washington University Law School in Washington DC.
Discussions like the growing trend among state legislatures that try to ban the recognition or practice of Islamic financing and Shariah law, actions that threaten to hinder the growth of Islamic financing opportunities in the US and block US access to billions in Shariah-compliant investments from Middle Eastern countries were heard.

Ahmad Mohamed Ali, president of the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB) was invited for the first time to approach the influential 84th Development Committee meeting of the World Bank as an observer. This was an important airing at the 2011 annual meetings of the World Bank Group/International Monetary Fund (IMF).
But it seems that Ali didn't take advantge to put the case for the role of Islamic finance in promoting economic growth and contributing to financial stability.
He instead advocated that IDB member countries need to assist domestic and regional markets through a coordinated intra-investment and intra-trade agenda that distribute production of goods and services among countries based on comparative advantage; and to improve human development and critical infrastructure to produce incentives for effective private sector growth that create jobs.

Datuk Dr Awang Adek Hussin, Deputy Finance Minister, stated that several strategies must be taken in order to strengthen Malaysia's position as an international Islamic financial centre. He added that Islamic scholars should spread their horizon and not limit themselves to one field of knowledge.
His oppinion is that the establishment of research institutions that promotes the development of Syariah principles was still having issues in the move to obtain the desired objectives.

Grosvenor Fund Management partnered with Kuwait Finance House to invest up to £380m in US healthcare real estate.
The partnership will aim the acquisition and development of private-pay senior living facilities and medical office buildings. Investments will take place through the formation of equity joint ventures with local and regional operating and development partners.
The new partnership is Grosvenor Fund Management’s third mechanism in 2011, having a combined investment capacity of £900m.

Real Estate Development Company may have problems to pay its debt among a slump in profits.
Investors are worried that the company may adress to "asset liquidation, which may result in sales of assets below market price". A decline in profit of for 10 consecutive quarters was noticed by the developer after demand for land in the kingdom fell.

The list following borrowers are anticipated to sell Islamic bonds: Indonesia, ABU DHABI NATIONAL ENERGY CO, QATAR INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC BANK (QIIK), TENAGA NASIONAL BHD. (TNB), MIDCITI RESOURCES SDN BHD., AL HILAL BANK, EMERY OLEOCHEMICALS GROUP, PT BANK MUAMALAT INDONESIA, INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC LIQUIDITY MANAGEMENT CORP., ACWA POWER INTERNATIONAL, ISLAMIC BANK OF THAILAND, PT BANK SYARIAH BRI, Russia, Senegal, TOURISM DEVELOPMENT & INVESTMENT CO., KUVEYT TURK KATILIM BANKASI AS and many others.