IslamicFinance.de

Dow Jones Indexes is expanding its Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes series by launching the Dow Jones Islamic Market Global Finance & Takaful Index, which measures the performance of financial services stocks that pass rules-based screens for Shari’ah compliance.
The new index, designed to provide broader coverage of the Shari’ah-compliant financial services sector, will serve as a benchmark and an underlying instrument for investment products such as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Islamic International Rating Agency has maintained Shari'a Quality Rating of AA (SQR) for Dawood Islamic Bank Ltd. The rating reflects IIRA's opinion that the DIBL confirms to very high standards of Shari'a requirements in all aspects of Shari'a quality analysis.
The rating is supported by the fact that Dawood Islamic Bank Ltd (DIBL) has an effective Shari'ah Supervisory Structure consisting of a Shari'ah Supervisory Committee (SSC) and is headed by a well known and highly respected Shari'a scholar Professor Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman.

Barwa Bank, the Qatar-based Islamic finance house, is thinking about a plan to make its trading debut this year.
Barwa CEO Steve Troop indicated that Qatar’s recent decision to terminate the Islamic finance operations of the country’s conventional banks was an “exciting move”.

Bank of London and The Middle East (BLME) has received a licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) to open its regional office in the Kingdom.
LME provides a wide range of services and advice to businesses and individuals, with a strong focus on Europe, the Mena region, as well as the US.
The opening of the Bahrain office, BLME’s first overseas office in the Gulf region, reinforces its ambition to provide a bridge between the UK and the GCC to offer a range of investment opportunities to the global investment community.

Tadhamon International Islamic Bank is planning o buy as much as 7 billion rials ($33 million) of sukuk when the government sells the debt this month.
The government is expected to offer 25 billion rials of sukuk in the first portion of a planned 100 billion-rial note program.

Cross-border sukuk originations into and out of Malaysia are set to increase as the global sukuk market continues its rebound. Investors are looking for better and more diversified returns, as the Malaysian government’s policy of encouraging government-linked companies (GLCs) and local financial institutions and corporates to increase their cross-border exposure to Islamic capital market instruments start to take effect.

Al-Jasser had earlier delivered a “tour de force” lecture titled “Macroeconomic Management in an Oil Economy: the Case of Saudi Arabia” in the historic Examinations Hall at Oxford University in the presence of Adrian Wood, professor of International Development at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University; Farhan Nizami, director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), and Nazir Tun Abdul Razak, chairman and CEO of Malaysia’s CIMB Bank Group and younger brother of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak.
The fact that Al-Jasser included Islamic finance as one of four main challenges of managing the Saudi economy going forward is a welcome departure from previous governors of SAMA who dare not speak the name of Islamic banking.

Dubai Grand Mufti, Dr Ali Mashael has described charging of profit for the delayed period in Islamic finance property projects as non-Islamic or 'haram' .
Some Islamic banks and mortgage companies have asked investors to pay advance installments (the rental profit or Ijara) even though an already delayed project is not yet completed or handed over.

The Chief Executive Officer of First Finance Company agrees with the Qatar Central Bank to impose greater regulation on conventional banks offering Islamic services over concerns that "unhealthy competition could lead to over-aggressive practices".
Khalid bin Ibrahim Al-Sulaiti, who is also Vice Chairman of IFS consultancy Bait Al Mushara, told Oxford Business Group (OBG), the global publishing, research and consultancy firm, that the constraints of Qatar's market also highlighted the likelihood of consolidation within the sector.

Bloomberg Islamic Finance Platform (ISLM) is a comprehensive solution designed to increase transparency, better connect the community and provide analytical tools to maximise investment performance in the rapidly growing market for Shariah-compliant products and services.
Bloomberg will also launch, in cooperation with the Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM), Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) sukuk index to provide a benchmark for MYR sovereign sukuk investments.

Amana Investments Ltd. has been the torchbearer of Islamic banking in Sri Lanka for almost the last two decades. In that time the parent company also established a Takaful (Islamic insurance) subsidiary, Amana Takaful, in a joint venture with Syarikat Takaful Malaysia and Amana Capital. At the helm at Amana are Chairman Osman Kassim and Managing Director and CEO Faizal Salieh, arguably the two most seasoned Islamic bankers in the country.
Last month, President and Finance Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka granted a full commercial banking license to Amana Investments Ltd. to set up Amana Bank, which is scheduled to start full operations later this year. The bank is headquartered in Colombo and has 13 branches in the west and east of the country as well as one in the south, in Galle, that are being converted into fully fledged branches of Amana Bank.

An Islamic finance research body backed by Bank Negara is drafting rules to regulate the use of derivatives to strengthen the industry's risk management framework and repair the perception of poor syariah compliance among banks.
The International Shariah Research Academy for Islamic Finance's (ISRA) rules would prescribe the boundaries that syariah banks have to observe to ensure that the usage of derivatives complies with Islam's ban on gambling.

The government faces an uphill battle to legislate tax benefits for Islamic bond investors at a parliamentary session starting Friday amid sturdy objections from opposition politicians and churches.
The Finance Ministry is pushing for a bill on Islamic bonds, or sukuk, that would grant tax exemption on profits earned by bondholders in a bid to widen Korea’s access to increasing Middle Eastern oil money.

A long-touted Islamic megabank has received approval from Bahrain and a preliminary green light from Malaysia to begin operations.
Saudi Arabia's Sheikh Saleh Kamel said the venture is still in discussions with Qatar to obtain a licence.

Kuwait-based Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC) has launched a 500 million ringgit (164 million US dollar) Sukuk issue in Malaysia as part of an existing funding program, one of a growing number of Middle East issuers to seek alternative sources of funding.
GIC, which was set up to drive private enterprise and economic growth in the Gulf region, had earlier established a 3.5 billion ringgit Sukuk program in the Southeast Asian country.

On wednesday 16th February there was the launch of a new global publishing venture called Eaglemont Media with a world-first Islamic finance e-newspaper called The Islamic Globe - written and produced by a team of seasoned media professionals from around the world.
The Islamic Globe is a free weekly e-newspaper that is delivered to readers on a variety of digital platforms - from the iPad to the iPhone, Blackberry to Kindle, Android to Samsung Tablet as well as PDF.

South Korea will renew its push to allow tax exemptions on Islamic bonds issued by companies to help local borrowers tap growing Muslim wealth.
The government’s “top priority” at a parliament session starting on Feb. 18 will be to pass a bill on Islamic bonds and another to impose a levy on banks’ foreign-currency debt.

Islamic finance made its debut in WikiLeaks last week when the whistleblower par excellence passed on a diplomatic cable dispatch to The Telegraph, sent by Robert Holmes Tuttle, the then US ambassador to the Court of St. James in London, to his bosses at the State Department and the US Treasury, outlining the UK government’s policy on Islamic finance and warned that London is getting the competitive edge on Wall Street as the international financial center because it has actively sought to promote itself as a global hub for Islamic finance, investment and trade.

Niche Islamic investment banks in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) may go in for mergers and acquisitions with conventional lenders to achieve the critical mass for reaping economies of scale.
It is anticipated first the build up of national champions driven by major shareholders, as was the case with Emirates NBD in conventional banking. Nice Islamic bank, such as Islamic investment banks (which have been particularly affected by the financial crisis) may diversify through M&As with banks that complement their businesses.

Uganda has received applications from three Islamic banks in the Middle East to offer Shariah- compliant financial services in the country.
The African nation is changing its banking rules to allow lenders to operate under Islamic law and representatives from its central bank are in Jakarta to learn from Indonesia’s experience. Southeast Asia’s largest economy, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, passed a law in 2008 to allow banks to offer services that comply with Islam’s ban on interest.