IslamicFinance.de

QInvest, Qatar’s leading investment group and one of the most prominent Islamic financial institutions globally, yesterday announced that its net profit for the third quarter grew 69 % to $33.8m while revenues jumped 37 % to $78.7m.

“We are very encouraged by our performance during the third quarter of 2015. With our commitment to drive growth and innovation across the business, we have continued to source new opportunities, strengthen our brand and deliver positive returns. Whilst we expect on-going market volatility and economic challenges to remain present, we are confident on the outlook for the business. We have an exciting active pipeline of deal flow and a unique market position to leverage investment opportunities across the GCC region and selected markets in Europe, Asia and the US” said Tamim Hamad Al Kawari, CEO of QInvest.

State Bank of Pakistan has reiterated its commitment for promotion and development of Islamic banking in Pakistan.
According to SBP’s press release, the share of Islamic banking in total deposits of the banking industry surged to 12.8% as of 30th June, 2015 due to is persistent efforts and is consistently growing with a cumulative average growth rate of over 50% during the past 12 years .
“To-date 5 full fledge Islamic banks, one Islamic Banking Subsidiary and 17 banks with dedicated Islamic Banking Branches are operating in the country with over 1700 branches spread all over the country”, the release read.
SBP has developed Shariah compliant open market operations for managing liquidity of Islamic banking sector, which is quite unique in the Islamic world. State Bank Shariah Board has also approved structure of Government of Pakistan Ijara Sukuk issued in the past and all such structures for future issues will be approved by SBP Shariah Board before their launch”.

Maybank Islamic, is one of the leading arrangers of sukuk in the world, has viewed Gulf Cooperation Council, including Qatar, as its priority region in mobilising funds through Shariah-principled bonds.
“The GCC is definitely on our radar. It all depends on what kind of opportunities are available,” said Nor Shahrizan Sulaiman, deputy chief executive of Maybank Islamic, which is wholly-owned by Maybank Group with strong credit ratings from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s.
The lender, a leading Islamic bank in the Asean region with assets to the tune of $42.65bn as on June 30, 2015, has a branch in Bahrain and a 30% stake in Anfaal Capital in Saudi Arabia.
Maybank is exploring opportunities in the Middle East through its stake in the Saudi Arabia’s Anfaal Capital. Almost 90% of the Maybank Islamic’s balance sheet is domestic and the remaining 10% is from overseas operations, according to Sulaiman.

In a joint press conference with the World Islamic Banking Conference, Ernest & Young highlighted part of its World Islamic Banking Competitiveness Report 2015-2016 in Manama. “The growth of the Islamic banking industry in the GCC, specifically in Saudi Arabia, in the past few years can be attributed to the increased public sector spending on the back of oil revenues. It will be interesting to see how banks are affected as governments draw their reserves from the banking sector to narrow the gap on budget deficits due to the drop in the global oil price,” said Muzammil Kasbati, Director, Global Islamic Banking Centre at Ernest & Young.
According to the statement, the GCC Islamic banking profit pool crossed $12 billion, with expectations that the sector will continue to grow amid regional economic uncertainty. Further, the statement says that nine core markets are currently the growth engines for the global Islamic finance industry. Ernest & Young identified a group of 40 banks across these nine core markets that are “systemically important” to the future progress of the industry.

The planned slowdown in public spending in Saudi Arabia will prove credit negative for banks in the kingdom, ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service has said in a new report. Following years of high expenditure, the Saudi government is planning to moderate the pace of spending due to the persistent drop in oil revenues. The International Monetary Fund estimates that Saudi will face a budget deficit of over $100bn this year, amounting to 21.6 per cent of gross domestic product. Moody’s anticipates that government spending growth will slow to 2 per cent in 2014 and 4 per cent in 2017, from 14 per cent on average between 2010 and 2014.

After Bank Mellat obtained the right to expand its operations in Turkey in March 2014, Iran's Saman Bank has also applied to the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK). The BDDK is now considering the Iranian bank's request; BDDK is expected to issue a reply around New Year's. Bank Tejarat and Pasargad Bank are also expected to reapply to be involved in the Turkish finance market after Saman Bank's application is approved. The approval of the expansion request of Bank Mellat, which had not been operationally active in Turkey due to sanctions and had downsized in 2012, also raised hopes for other banks.

Bank Indonesia (BI) has acknowledged a new challenge for the national economy – the rise of global small and medium enterprises (SME) and their increased penetration of the local domestic market. According to BI, in order to compete, local SMEs need to be strengthened through massive financing, including through Islamic banking. The challenge is getting more serious as the economy opens up with developments like the Asean Economic Community (AEC) agreement, which will come into effect soon, leading to massive corporate foreign investments that will bring foreign SMEs to Indonesia, BI deputy governor Perry Warjiyo said.

Dubai Islamic Bank will require capital in 2016 to boost its capital adequacy ratios, the bank's chief executive said on Wednesday. DIB's total capital adequacy ratio, a combination of Tier 1 and Tier 2 capital -- regarded as one of the key indicators of a bank's health -- stood at 16.5 percent at the end of the third quarter, up from 14.9 percent at the end of 2014, Adnan Chilwan said in an analysts' conference call.

Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB) announced that its Extra Ordinary Shareholder Meeting has approved all agenda items, in the meetings which was held yesterday Tuesday 27th October 2015 at 10:00 am at BisB Headquarters – Al Salam Tower – Diplomatic Area. The items included the following the reduction in issued and paid-up capital of BisB aiming to write-off accumulated losses and the issuance of up to 200,000,000 Ordinary Shares with Nominal Value of BD 0.100 each. The EGM has empowered the Board of Directors to decide upon the terms and conditions of the Rights Offer. The EGM then exempted any existing shareholder whose ownership may increase up to 30% or more to make a mandatory offer to all shareholders.

Since regulations were finalised in late 2012, Oman's Islamic banks have been the most dynamic part of the banking sector and are expected to take an ever more significant share of the overall market in the next few years. Mik Kabeya, analyst in the financial institutions group of Moody’s Investors Service estimates that the asset base of Oman’s Islamic banking sector grew by 68 per cent in 2014, compared to growth of 11 per cent in the conventional banking arena. Islamic banks could account for around 10 per cent of the banking sector’s asset base within 2-3 years, compared to around 6 per cent at the moment. Earlier this year the Muscat government also said that it would issue its first sovereign sukuk.

State investment fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd is expected to dispose off its entire 30 per cent interest in Bank Muamalat to major shareholder DRB-Hicom Bhd ahead of the proposed merger between Bank Muamalat and Malaysia Building Society Bhd (MBSB) materialises. There is no point holding on to the stake since its holdings would diminish in the merged entity. Moreover, it would not be a problem for DRB-Hicom which already owns 70 per cent interest in Bank Muamalat to purchase Khazanah’s interest. Khazanah managing director Azman Mokhtar had told reporters that it would wait for the outcome of the merger talks before deciding what to do with its stake.

The WIBC Leaderboard announced today the global rankings of Islamic banks in terms of Cost-to-Income ratio, one of the financial performance sub-indicators of the Leaderboard. No less than three Qatar-based banks have appeared in the top 5 Islamic banks in the GCC based on the Cost-to-Income ratio rankings. As per the rankings, Masraf Al Rayan and Qatar International Islamic Bank, both based in Qatar are positioned at the top of Islamic financial institutions in the GCC with a ratio of 20.6% and 24.4% respectively. The Cost-to-Income ratio is calculated based on non-interest operating cost divided by the sum of net interest income and non-interest operating income.

Capital Intelligence (CI) said that following the recent downgrade in the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Sovereign Ratings in September 2015, it has lowered Bahrain-based Al Baraka Islamic Bank’s (AIB) Long and Short-Term Foreign Currency Ratings to ‘BB’ and ‘B’, respectively (from ‘BB+’/‘A3’/‘Stable’). Accordingly, the Outlook for these ratings is revised to ‘Stable’ from ‘Negative’. The Support Level of ‘2’ is maintained on the grounds of the high likelihood of support from the parent ‘Al Baraka Banking Group’ (ABG), also in Bahrain.

Al-Arafah Islami Bank Ltd has donated a fund worth Tk 2.0 million for development of research on constructing crop cold storages at affordable costs. Professor Dr M Monjur Hossain of Rajshahi University received the fund from the bank under its CSR activities. Chairman of Al-Arafah Islami Bank Ltd Badiur Rahman and the bank’s managing director Mohammad Habibur Rahman were present in a ceremony arranged on the occasion, according to a statement.

Ambassador Adamu Babangida Ibrahim, a banker, has served as Nigerian Ambassador to the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Guinea. Ambassador Ibrahim is the pioneer Director-General, Jaiz Charity and Development Foundation, a charity arm of the Jaiz Bank. Jaiz Foundation uses the income that the bank cannot recognise under their profit and loss as Halal income for charity purposes. These monies are supposed to be used for charity and development purposes for interventions, especially in the poor and underserved people for economic empowerment, for intervention in health, education and so forth.

During last six months, the Government of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Malaysian-Russian consortium comprising UNIRAZAK, IBFIM and IBFD Fund have been working up on the possibility of preparing the feasibility study on launching Islamic banks or Islamic banking windows on the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan as a pilot region for the introduction of Islamic banking and finance in the Russian Federation. The Feasibility study includes main principles and philosophies of Islamic finance, strategies and approaches of Islamic banking and takaful implementation, market study on the potential Islamic finance consumers, considerations and prerequisite of successful implementation.

Islamic banking has gradually been making inroads into the Nigerian banking system. But as a renowned Islamic finance and risk management expert and Registrar of the Islamic Institute of Accounting and Finance in Nigeria (IIAF), Dr. Busari Shaamsuddeen Akande said, there are grey areas in the strict practice of Islamic banking. Islamic banks, Dr Akande asserts, suffer from an identity crisis in practising the system. He delivered the paper titled, “Ethical Challenges and Product Innovation Crisis for Islamic Banks”at the South-South Summit on Islamic banking. The underlying fact of the paper is that the major crisis is that Islamic banking products are modelled after existing conventional bank products.

First National Bank (FNB) is looking to expand its Islamic banking offering to Zambia and Tanzania before the end of its financial year in June next year. FNB, which has been on an expansion phase in select countries in the rest of Africa, is looking to use the Islamic banking offering to capture clients, especially in those countries that have big Muslim communities. Amman Muhammad, the CEO of FNB Islamic Banking, said that in sub-Saharan Africa there were about 280-million Muslim people and the FirstRand group had a presence in countries that had about 200-million Muslims. The bank already offers Islamic banking in Botswana.

UAE's Mashreq Al Islami has successfully closed a 5 year USD 500 million senior secured syndicated facility for Ezdan Holding Group Company Q.S.C., the largest private sector real estate developer in Qatar. Mashreq Al Islami UAE acted as Mandated Lead Arranger, Sole Book Runner and Facility Agent for the facility. Other banks that participated in the financing included Abu Dhabi Islamic bank, Ahli United Bank, Emirates NBD, Gulf International Bank, HSBC Bank Middle East as Mandated Lead Arrangers, Sharjah Islamic bank, Warba Bank as Lead Arrangers and QIIB as asset custodian. The Facility proceeds will be utilized to support the Company's expansion and developmental plans in its core market.

Khazanah Nasional Bhd plans to divest its entire 30% stake in Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd in the proposed merger between the lender and Malaysia Building Society Bhd (MBSB), sources say. That it plans to sell the entire 30% stake isn’t exactly surprising considering that Khazanah has long made it known that it considers the stake a “non-core holding”, which meant that it was open to letting it go at the right price. Another reason for the planned divestment is that Bank Negara Malaysia is not keen on the government investment arm owning major stakes in more than one bank. It already owns 29.34% in CIMB Group Holdings Bhd.