IslamicFinance.de

Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House (GFH) plans to reduce its capital and raise up to $500 million in fresh funds to plug the holes a regional property crunch cut into its balance sheet.
The Islamic investment house said in August it would hold a shareholder's meeting in October to approve plans to raise up to $300m through a murabaha, an Islamic equity-linked money market instrument.
GFH is one of the Bahraini investment houses that relied on fees charged on investor money raised for private equity and property projects, a market that collapsed when the global financial crisis triggered a regional property crash in 2008.
It posted a $728m loss for 2009 and has since struggled to pay back its debt as it failed to sell down illiquid property assets and find a new business model.
It narrowly escaped default in February when it reached a last-minute deal with lender to roll over a $300m loan and now needs to find fresh fund to finish the property projects it started from Morocco to India.

Gatehouse Bank, London-based Shariah-compliant wholesale bank, is planning to launch a £70 million (Dh410m) Islamic bond (sukuk) next month.
In an exclusive interview with Emirates 24|7, Fahed Boodai said the sukuk is targeted at the UK corporates and is expected to be completed in November.
Simon Eedle added that the time is also right for sukuk issuances outside of the Gulf region and he expects more investment money from the West to tap the Islamic finance market in 2011.

The growing demand for securities that meet Islamic religious principles may lead Canadian governments and companies to start issuing Shariah bonds.
HSBC Bank Canada may offer $500 million and three government-related borrowers from one Canadian province may issue $1.5 billion of sukuk, Omar Kalair, chief executive officer of Toronto-based UM Financial, said in an Oct. 14 interview. A “handful” of Canadian companies may sell C$1 billion ($980 million) of Islamic debt by 2013, said Daud Vicary Abdullah, global Islamic finance leader at Deloitte Corporate Advisory Services Sdn. in Kuala Lumpur.
Egypt, Nigeria, the Philippines and Thailand have announced plans to sell their first sukuk in the past three months, partly to tap Persian Gulf oil wealth.

Sharjah Islamic Bank has announced that its profits in the third quarter of the current year reached Dhs191.6m. The lender's balance sheet grew since December 2009 with total assets reaching Dhs16.3bn compared with Dhs16.0bn, the bank said. Total liquid assets increased by Dhs410.2m 12.9% to reach Dhs3.6bn.

Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB.AD) will kick off a non-equity investor roadshow in Asia, Europe and the Middle East on Oct. 20, it said on Monday, amid talks that the lender is planning to issue an Islamic bond, or sukuk.
Last week, sources said ADIB, the second largest Islamic lender in the United Arab Emirates, had mandated three banks to arrange a sale.

Gulf Finance House (GFH), the troubled Islamic investment bank based in Bahrain, wants to raise up to US$500 million (Dh1.83 billion) from investors after declines in Gulf property prices and the fracturing of its business model led to huge losses last year.
GFH was among the hardest hit in the region by the financial crisis and is one of many in Bahrain and Kuwait forced to restructure debts and rethink their methods for raising money, making investments and borrowing.
Shareholders are also to vote on a consolidation of shares through which four old shares would be exchanged for one new.
And the bank will seek a reduction in capital, which observers say will allow it to swallow accumulated losses and start paying dividends immediately after raising new capital. The consolidation would reduce the number of shares on the market but would not affect the company's market value.
Hit by a lack of revenues to finance its operations and pay debts, GFH was forced to reach new terms with creditors on hundreds of millions of dollars of debt.

France has now a tax neutrality regime in place for facilitating Islamic financial products including Islamic bonds and certificates; cost-plus-financing; leasing and construction industry forward financing.

The measures were passed at end July 2010 but were published in the Bulletin Officiel des Impôts n° 78 on Aug. 24. They supersede the instructions published by the French government on Febr. 25, 2009, relating to sukuk and Murabaha transactions only.

The text in original can be found here: http://www11.minefi.gouv.fr/boi/boi2010/cadliste.htm

Persian Gulf Islamic bond issuers are avoiding collateral based on real estate after Dubai property prices plunged 50 percent.
Debt linked to returns from oil fields, aluminum and manufacturing plants are more popular with investors than property.
Defaults by some companies have increased concern among investors about risks associated with Islamic bonds. International Investment Group KSCC, an Islamic financial company based in Safat, Kuwait, said July 26 it was unable to pay $152.5 million to bondholders who demanded immediate repayment after it defaulted on a $200 million Islamic bond.

Islamic banking is a system of banking that avoids receipt and payment of interest in its transactions and conducts its operations in accordance with Shariah principles to achieve the objectives of Islamic economy. Growth of Islamic banking over the last decade in general and after the recent global financial crisis in particular has been tremendous.
Besides growth, there have been some dimensional developments in the field of Islamic banking in Bangladesh. Apart from first generation established Islamic banks, which have been operating under Islamic Shariah, most of the leading conventional banks have opened Islamic banking windows to deliver service according to Shariah principles. This trend indicates that Islamic banking will keep flourishing and increase its share in the banking industry of the country. In spite of the vigorous growth, many bankers are yet to be familiar with the process by which Islamic banking can be conducted side by side the conventional system.

International insurers seeking a bigger share of the potentially lucrative Gulf market need to adapt quickly to regulatory changes and tap into growth areas like Islamic finance or risk being muscled out of consolidation.
With a penetration rate of around 1 percent of gross domestic product, the overall Middle Eastern insurance sector lags mature markets but its huge growth potential has already attracted global heavyweights such as AXA and Allianz.
However, the sector’s regulatory framework is transforming rapidly and some multinationals remain cautious in developing their Islamic product offering, giving domestic competitors such as Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company, Saudi’s Tawuniya and Qatar Insurance Company the chance to build a dominant position.
Within insurance, the life segment and takaful in particular holds the biggest potential in the region. Premium income in life insurance in Saudi Arabia, for example, soared 61 percent last year, boosted by strong demand for sharia-compliant products, while non-life grew 25 percent according to Swiss Re’s “World insurance in 2009” report.

Regional groupings are building blocks for a pan-Islamic economic integration, according to Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
A source at the OIC headquarters here informed Khaleej Times on Thursday that addressing the Twenty-Sixth Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the OIC (COMCEC) in Istanbul, urged OIC member states to consider supporting the numerous capacity-building programmes undertaken by the various OIC institutions as this will certainly pave the way for aligning national trade policies to enhance intra-OIC cooperation in the domain of trade.
The source said that the meeting discussed the implementation of the OIC Ten Year Programme of Action, which was approved at the 3rd extra-ordinary OIC summit held in Makkah in 2005, within the context of the on-going economic activities, programmes and projects for promoting rapid socio-economic development in the OIC countries.

Standard and Poor's Ratings Services has lowered its counterparty credit and insurer financial strength ratings on First Takaful Insurance Co. to 'BB+' from 'BBB-'. The Kuwait-based insurance company's ratings were removed from CreditWatch. Outlook is stable. "The outlook is stable because we believe that First Takaful will be able to prevent further weakening of its capitalization and operating performance within the next 12 months," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Wolfgang Rief.

The Private Financial Services Department Manager at Kuwait Finance House (KFH) Talal Al-Nesf announced that KFH's local real estate portfolio 2 achieved high returns that resulted in the distribution of 6% annual profit.
He added that the portfolio that has a capital of KD60m began operating in July and distributes quarterly profits, such as groups of investment and commercial real estate in Kuwait; noting that such results reveal the success of KFH's policy to focus on quality assets that yield high returns. He stated that each investment project is carefully studied to achieve high returns with minimal risks.
Moreover, he revealed in a press statement that KFH is in the final stages of the process of selling real estate of KFH's real estate fund in Turkey with over 12% of capital profit.

Customers who are eager to be Sharia compliant are flocking to Islamic banks. Yet as Islamic lending boasts that it charges no interest, crunching the numbers churns out something of a surprise. Some Islamic mortgages charge more than already high interest-based traditional mortgages. You could even argue that an Islamic mortgage is, in some cases, so expensive it is akin to usury. And the terms are often less favourable.
Take the current murabaha rates in Syria and Lebanon. Murabaha is an Islamic equivalent to a mortgage or car loan. Instead of lending the customer money and charging interest, the bank purchases the asset and resells it for a profit to the customer. This profit is the murabaha rate.
Unlike, say, in the UK, there are no regulatory laws in Syria that require Islamic banks to quote their product in a way that is equivalent to an interest-based traditional mortgage to allow comparison shopping. The only way the average customer can convert murabaha to interest-based is with the help of a financial calculator and a professional.

Shariah-complaint microfinance cooperatives are making inroads in rural Kerala much to the relief of the poor and needy and the most interesting feature of it is that the bad debt is almost nil, according to a paper presented at the International Conference on Islamic Finance: Products, Institutions and Regulators that concluded here recently.
According to Mohammed Palath, a researcher in economics at the Kannur University in northern Kerala who made a presentation on the role of these collectives called nidhis have proved the best tool for poverty alleviation and financial inclusion.
Kerala has the highest number of interest-free funds which has now crossed 500 in number. These institutions lend money charging no interest, ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 25000, and without collateral securities. The borrowers pledge gold or personal securities undertaken by others.

The World Bank is to set up a regional $1bn development fund in cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to close the infrastructure gap in the Middle East and North Africa region, Gulf News has reported. "This regional initiative will unlock new flows of private sector investment to help countries like Egypt, Morocco, Jordan or Tunisia eager to push ahead with critical infrastructure projects that will drive competitiveness and boost much needed job creation," Robert Zoellick, World Bank president said.

First it was the shareholders of Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB) at their general meeting in August 2010 approving a 20 million pounds capital injection from founding shareholder Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB). This was an effective bailout of IBB which gives the UK's only dedicated Islamic commercial bank some much-needed breathing space.
BLME, the wholesale Islamic bank which claims to be the largest Islamic bank in Europe, was the first of the five Islamic banks in the UK to report "a healthy return to profitability" for the first half of 2010.
One area in which BLME is setting the pace is Islamic trade finance and structured trade finance. According to Massoud Janekeh, director of Islamic Capital Markets at BLME trade finance should be a natural home for Islamic finance funded either through a Murabaha sale or a Tawarruq structure.

It is a step in the right direction, but in terms of adding critical mass to the pool of issuances of international sukuk, it is a mere drop in the ocean. Nevertheless, the successful closure in early October 2010 by Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), the largest Islamic bank in Qatar, of its debut $750 million fixed-rate Wakala sukuk underlines the fact that despite the huge latent appetite for "A" rated Islamic commercial paper from investors all over the world, such issuances are too few and far between to stimulate an effective global sukuk market and its attendant secondary trading.
Despite the fact that QIB stresses that this issue could pave the way for future issuances, it settled for a single transaction as opposed to a program of which this $750 million sukuk issued on its behalf through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), QIB Sukuk Funding Limited, would have represented the first tranche.

A Malaysia International Finance Centre (MIFC) delegation, headed by Raja Nazrin Shah, crown prince of Perak, visited Saudi Arabia recently to promote Islamic finance relations. The 33-member delegation included representatives of 17 Islamic banks and 12 Islamic fund management companies and some asset management firms, aside from Takaful operators, and legal and other professional services firms.
With the sukuk market acquiring going global dimensions market education and knowledge, especially of Islamic Capital Markets (ICM), becomes a necessity. This is met by the Islamic Markets Programme (IMP), which is held annually by the Securities Industry Development Corporation (SIDC), the training and development arm of the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC).

Egypt, home to the Arab world’s largest Muslim population, will issue its first Islamic debt guidelines in 2011 to catch up with the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia and help spur sales.
Al Baraka Bank Egypt ESC, a Cairo unit of Bahrain-based Islamic lender Albaraka Banking Group, may sell dollar- denominated Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, in the second half of 2011.
Al Baraka, Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt and National Bank for Development are the nation’s only Shariah- compliant financial institutions.