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Pakistan's Ministry of Finance selected Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank and Standard Chartered as bookrunners for a U.S. dollar sukuk issue. An official said; the tenor of the bond and the format would be decided soon

Dentons has advised Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (Malaysia) on an Islamic commodity murabahah facility of US$100 million to the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector. Qasim Aslam, Partner and the Head of Islamic Finance - Middle East, commented: "This marks another example of the significant efforts leading Japanese financial institutions are making to work together in making Islamic finance available across borders. We are very proud to have assisted BTMU on this landmark transaction." The Dentons team was led by Qasim Aslam and senior associate Tien Tai based in Dubai

Judith Rodin is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation. She is in charge of giving away one of America’s historic fortunes. But nowadays Rockefeller doesn’t mean quite what it once did. The foundation ranks only 16th in assets among U.S. charities. After a century of giving away money, only 4.1 billion US-Dollars are left of the once enormous fortune. No. 1 in the ranking for charity is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with 37.2 Billion US-Dollars. The latest pilot project is Smart Power that aims to electrify villages in India.

MAYBANK Islamic Bhd hopes the government will introduce tax incentives for corporations, particularly to support the development of waqf and zakat. Potential growth in the two major sectors of Islamic endowments is given and they could benefit from tax breaks. The bank also hopes the government will continue its favourable policy on foreign currency transaction in Islamic banking, such as the International Currency Business Unit (ICBU) initiative which allows local players to conduct Islamic banking in international currencies via a division set up under the Islamic Banking Act 1983.

Islamic banking industry is hoping that the government will provide incentives to facilitate the development of the investment account (IA) in 2015. Bank Islam Bhd Managing Director Datuk Seri Zukri Samat said the industry would benefit from such incentives. Zukri also suggested that the government educate the people on Islamic finance as well as prosper the IFSA 2013.

BNP Paribas-INCEIF Centre for Islamic Wealth Management (CIWM) organised a conference on "Malaysia, the Future Global Private Banking Hub: Opportunities and Challenges". It showed that current trends towards regional financial integration have presented significant opportunities into the pool of savings of Asia’s expanding middle class, now more than 2.6 million high net worth individuals. These trends show the increasing demand for private banking by HNWIs with taste for more sophisticated consumer finance and wealth management products.

In The Prince of Evolution Dugatkin tells the story of the Russian prince, evolutionary theorist, and political radical Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin whose Darwinian theory of mutual aid was the first to argue that cooperation was an integral part of natural selection. Dugatkin’s book is a précis on Kropotkin’s life and work, an overview that highlights the common theme of mutual aid in both his scientific and political ideas. The discoveries that Kropotkin made of glacial formations during the Quaternary Period in Russia were received with international acclaim and earned him invitations to join the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a Cambridge University endowed chair in geology.

SWIFT, in collaboration with The Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM) and the Malaysian Islamic financial community, say they will launch a new rulebook for the usage of SWIFT MT messages for Islamic finance. The SWIFT Islamic Finance Rulebook will be available to the Message User Group (MUG) by the end of 2014. The rulebook will provide greater clarity around SWIFT MT message usage based on Islamic principles in order to enable straight-through processing (STP), thereby improving efficiency as well as reducing risk and cost. It will provide a platform for exchanging Islamic finance messages and further promote the usage of message standards.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) will issue Islamic bonds in two tranches under its debut multi-currency sukuk wakala programme in Malaysia. BTMU will issue US$25 million (RM81 million) in a US dollar tranche and 2.5 billion yen (RM74 million) in a yen tranche on Thursday, a statement said. Both sukuk issues will have maturities of one year; the statement did not give other details such as pricing. Malaysia's CIMB Investment Bank is managing the issues. BTMU, part of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, set up a US$500 million multi-currency sukuk programme through its Malaysian unit in June.

Japan’s Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ is set to issue a two tranche Wakala Sukuk. At present the bank is allowed by the regulator in Japan only to handle Islamic financial transactions out of Malaysia through a subsidiary called BTMU Malaysia. BTMU will issue the Sukuk in a $25m US$ tranche and a 2.5bn yen tranche with both tranches carrying maturities of one year. CIMB Investment Bank is managing the issues.

The Islamic banking industry needs to take more meaningful steps to benefit the poor, says Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) Economics and Muamalat Faculty Dean Assoc. Prof. Dr. Amir Shaharuddin. Amir said although microfinance is still new in this country, in Indonesia, Sudan, Bangladesh and Pakistan it has given the poor a chance to take part in the Islamic banking system. He said many wakaf funds and parcels of wakaf land in Malaysia are not effectively managed, and the full potential of wakaf assets has yet to be realised. The situation could improve with with more professional management, he said, citing the substantially higher zakat collection now with better management.

The scope and potential of Islamic finance, insurance, and banking in the Maldives is yet to be fully explored, suggests Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) Governor Dr Azeema Adam. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the first ‘Maldives Islamic Banking and Finance Industry Conference’, Dr Azeema said Islamic finance provides a springboard to generate innovative ideas to cater to the financing needs of the domestic economy. Islamic banking and capital market services were introduced in the Maldives in 2011, with the opening of the Maldives Islamic Bank (MIB). However, providing banking services to all inhabited islands might not always be profitable Azeema continued, requiring innovation within the Maldivian financial sector.

AIG Re-Takaful (L) has brought in additional capacity to spur growth of the Malaysia general takaful industry which is currently constricted by limited capacity. In addition, the fully Shariah-compliant unit of insurance giant American International Group Inc (AIG) is differentiating itself from competitors consisting of retakaful operators backed by global reinsurance companies. AIG Re- Takaful CEO Idzuddin Zakaria said the company has treaty and facultative capacity to take on larger risks and offer more sophisticated products and services. AIG Re-Takaful, in operation since April 2014, has undertaken a few facultative risks which frees takaful companies to undertake more risks and thus growing the general takaful sindustry. AIG Re-Takaful will also explore and expand on opportunities to grow in the Malaysian market.

The RHB Banking Group is keen to participate in more global sukuk issuance after making significant inroads in the market via its units, RHB Islamic Bank Bhd and RHB Investment Bank Bhd (RHBIB), in recent global transactions. Yesterday, RHBIB co-managed the Government of Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China's inaugural US$1 billion sukuk issuance which also marks the world's first US dollar-denominated sukuk originated by a AAA-rated government. RHBIB meanwhile was lead manager cum underwriter to IDB Trust Services Ltd's recent 5-year US$1.5 billion sukuk issuance under its US$10 billion (RM32 billion) sukuk programme guaranteed by the Saudi based Islamic Development Bank.

Two of Malaysia’s 16 Islamic lenders now have female CEOs and three of the 11-member central bank Shariah Advisory Board are women, becoming role models for Prime Minister Najib Razak’s push to raise the female labor participation rate to 55 percent by 2015, from 52.4 percent now. The push, which mirrors similar efforts in Japan and South Korea, aims to widen the pool of available talent and help Malaysia maintain its position as the world’s preeminent center for Islamic finance. Only one Shariah bank in the Middle East has a female CEO. Besides, being open to female talent has allowed Malaysia to access a wider pool of Shariah scholars, an area where there is a shortage of experts.

The Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector ( ICD ) and Perbadanan Tabung Amanah Islam Brunei (Perbadanan TAIB), signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the launch of a Shariah- compliant leasing/Ijarah business in Brunei Darussalam. The Partnership plans a number of other COLLABORATIONS with the support of the Ijarah Management Company (IMC). Established in November 2011, IMC has successfully managed to set up and operate more than eight leasing companies globally including CIS, MENA and West Africa countries.

Turkish participation bank Kuveyt Turk plans to issue sukuk in Malaysia aiming to raise as much as 2 billion ringgit ($625.3 million), its first foray into the Southeast Asian Islamic debt capital market. Kuveyt Turk, 62 percent owned by Kuwait Finance House , will sell the sukuk to qualified investors through its asset-leasing company, KT Kira Sertifikalari Varlik Kiralama. No timeframe was given for the deal. In July, Turkiye Finans became the first Turkish lender to issue ringgit-denominated sukuk in Malaysia when it raised 800 million ringgit ($252.2 million) from a 3 billion ringgit programme it set up in June. Moreover, in June, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ set up a $500 million multi-currency sukuk programme in Malaysia.

Indonesia's financial services authority, Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) is preparing a five-year blueprint aimed at industry issues such as sector consolidation, a lack of scale and foreign ownership limits. OJK said it was now preparing draft regulations for Islamic pension funds, after Indonesia's national sharia council issued a ruling approving the overall concept in November last year. Under a "moderate" scenario, the OJK projects Islamic banking assets will grow by 14.4 percent in 2014, down from 24.2 percent in 2013 and 34 percent in 2012, although these figures would remain above those for conventional banks. The OJK said challenges faced by Islamic banks were mainly internal, rather than related to external pressures such as falling commodity prices or lower export demand.

Industry players are upbeat about Islamic Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) but say a lot needs to be done to raise awareness and excitement about the investment fund. Generally, however, Malaysia has not been enjoying much success when it comes to ETFs since the first product was listed on the local bourse in 2005. Global ETF experts were in unison in pinpointing limited investor awareness as the culprit for the fund’s lack of success. The Malaysian ETF market stands at RM1.03 billion of assets under management (AUM) as at August 2014, versus the global figure of more than US$3 trillion (RM9.6 trillion) by year-end. On the global stage, ETFs have been growing at a phenomenal rate, estimated at some 20 per cent of compounded annual growth rate since its debut in 1989.

The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, has graciously consented to be the Royal Patron for Malaysia’s Islamic Finance Initiative. On behalf of the Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) executive committee, the central bank said under the patronage of Sultan Nazrin, it was envisaged that Malaysia’s Islamic finance marketplace would continue to further strengthen the goodwill and strong bilateral relationships the country has established with other nations. Sultan Nazrin obtained a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University.