IslamicFinance.de

STOXX has launched three Shariah-compliant indices in Europe.
The new indices are the STOXX Europe Islamic Index and its two blue-chip sub-indices, the STOXX Europe Islamic 50 and EURO STOXX Islamic 50.

British lender Barclays Bank has appointed Dominic Selwood as a director responsible for its Islamic products services.
Selwood joins Barclays as a director in the Financial Institutional Structuring Group (FISG) and is currently based in London.

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.

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.

The Bank of London and The Middle East has been granted a licence by the Central Bank of Bahrain to open an office in the kingdom. The bank is a Financial Services Authority authorised independent wholesale Sharia-compliant bank based in London.

The Bank of London and The Middle East's (BLME) Sharia’a USD Income Fund has been ranked in the top decile of funds for 2010 by Lipper Hindsight, Thomson Reuters’ fund ranking platform.
This is proof of the fund’s good performance and its ability to provide a good balance between liquidity and return in a challenging environment.
Since its launch in March 2009 BLME’s USD Income Fund has offered investors weekly liquidity and enhanced yields through investment in Islamic money markets and the Sukuk (Islamic Bond) market.

Kuwait’s AITanmya International Investment and Aswar Joint Real Estate have signed a 49-year lease for the Tat Towers, located in Istanbul’s central Zincirlikuyu neighborhood.
The investors aim to open the hotel by the start of 2012, investing $40 million.

Insurance company Neova Sigorta is set to implement takaful in Turkey.
The company will distribute its profits to customers. Neova Sigorta will be able to implement the takaful system once it begins to make a profit in three to four years.

Islamic finance is growing rapidly. Statistics show that global Islamic banking assets have grown approximately 10% per annum from the mid 1990s.
The growth of Islamic Financial Services has been driven by a growing Islamic population that is enjoying a rapid rise in purchasing power, due to better education and employment opportunities. This has been supported by financial engineering and innovation in the provision of Islamic financial products and services.
Moreover, Dubai Exports held a seminar to highlight Islamic Financial Opportunities in Germany and France which are two of the main economies within the Eurozone. The seminar was aimed at the very senior management within the Islamic financial services sector.

This year following the creation of a Sharia-compliant share index on the country’s main stock exchange will start Turkey’s first investment fund to comply with Islamic rules.
Bizim Securities will seek to raise an initial 100 million Turkish Liras ($64 million) to start investing in the second half of this year.

The books for Emaar Properties' planned Islamic bond, or sukuk, sale are now open and the price whisper is in the 8.625% area.
The Dubai-based real-estate developer last week said it appointed HSBC, RBS and Standard Chartered to arrange investor meetings targeting fixed-income investors starting Jan. 21. The meetings were arranged in Asia, Europe and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council states.

Norton Rose (Middle East) LLP confirms that Dubai-based partner and Global Head of Islamic Finance, Neil D Miller will be retiring from the practice on 2 April 2011.
Neil will be joining one of the big four professional services firms in Dubai, where he will lead the establishment of a global Islamic financial advisory business.
Norton Rose Group’s award winning global Islamic practice will be led by three partners who will act as regional heads. Mohammed Paracha, based in Bahrain, will be responsible for the Middle East and Africa, Farmida Bi in London for Europe and Davide Barzilai in Hong Kong for Asia Pacific.

A Memorandum of Intents (MOI) on cooperation in designing funding, developing and operating industrial zones projects was recently signed by the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD), the private sector arm of the Islamic Development Bank Group, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Yemen, and the Union of Chambers of Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB).
The MOI aims to launch and facilitate cooperation and coordination among the three parties in the formulation, development, promotion and implementation of industrial zones in Yemen as a model of special economic zones based on partnership between the public and private sectors through the use of the Turkish experience in organized industrial zones as well as the international best practices and experiences.

The U.K., Europe’s largest market for Shariah-compliant financial products and services, canceled what would have been the first sale of Islamic bonds by a Western federal government as issues fell 15 percent in 2010.
Growth in Europe’s Islamic financial hub has been hampered by slowing economic expansion and the government’s attempt to plug a budget deficit.

France plans to develop Islamic finance and attract investment from the Gulf to its economy.
The first Islamic bond from France may be sold in early 2011 after the government introduces guidelines for sukuk offerings.
The aim of France is to boost exports to the region by coordinating them with small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Gold is marginally higher in US dollars while silver has risen by nearly 1% in all major currencies this morning. Risk appetite remains high as seen in higher Asian and European bourses today.
The focus of markets is the Portuguese bond auction today and Spain’s bond auction tomorrow.

Barwa Real Estate Company QSC and Gazprombank OJSC announced yesterday the first closing of the Shariah compliant, Barwa Gazprombank Russia Real Estate Fund. The Fund represents the first collaboration between Barwa and Gazprombank and the two companies will seed the Fund with $75m capital each.
The First Investor QSCC (TFI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barwa Bank, will contribute $2m into the Fund.

Ben Verlong’s thriller “Takiye: Allah’?n Yolunda” a Dutch-Turkish joint production dealt with a major investment scam that lost many people’s life savings and the disappearance of investors along with huge amounts of money. The film starred Erhan Emre as a man who trusts his money in an Islamic investment, convincing those around him to do the same, only to be left empty-handed after the company goes bankrupt with the executives nowhere in sight.

The story is based on a major investment scam, which attracted substantial amounts in Germany from Turkish migrants.

The following borrowers are expected to sell Islamic bonds: MALAYSIA, YEMEN, DUBAI, GULF INVESTMENT CORP., FRANCE, SAUDI INTERNATIONAL PETROCHEMICAL CO., GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., PALESTINE MONETARY AUTHORITY, NAKHEEL PJSC, SABAH CREDIT CORP., CREDIT AGRICOLE SA, NOOR ISLAMIC BANK, NATIONAL COMMERCIAL BANK, KPJ HEALTHCARE BHD., EMIRATES TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORP., SENEGAL, ALBARAKA BANKING GROUP., ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT BANK, THAILAND, KNM GROUP BHD., CAGAMAS BHD., SAUDI ARABIAN OIL CO., GAMUDA BHD., EGYPT, PT BANK MUAMALAT INDONESIA, SENAI-DESARU EXPRESSWAY BHD., MALAYSIA DEBT VENTURES BHD, INDONESIA, TURKEY, KAZAKHSTAN, PHILIPPINES, SAUDI ELECTRICITY CO., EMIRATES INTEGRATED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CO., LAFARGE MALAYAN CEMENT BHD..

Standard Chartered Plc and Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd. plan to offer Shariah-compliant derivatives in Malaysia that will allow investors to hedge against interest rates and commodity prices.
Bank Islam Malaysia, the country’s oldest Islamic lender, will offer swaps that allow two parties to exchange different forms of payments from an underlying asset. Standard Chartered, the U.K. bank that earns most of its profit from emerging markets, will begin selling contracts in the first quarter that provide protection from fluctuations in the cost of items such as rice and oil.