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As part of Taageer's efforts to spread its geographical presence, the company has made its first investments in Sudan along with one of the major founder promoters of Taageer (The Arab Investment Company). The most important aspect of the investment is that Taageer would be adding value to Sudan operations by providing Technical and Management consultancy during the first three years of operations. The Arab Leasing Company Limited, which falls under the supervision of the Central Bank of Sudan, is considered to be a leading institution in the field of finance leasing in Sudan. The company, registered in Sudan, specialises in finance leasing activity with its head office in Khartoum, with a paidup capital of US $30 million.

The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) announces that the monthly issue of the Sukuk Al-Salam Islamic securities has been oversubscribed. Subscriptions worth BD63m were received for the BD12m issue, which carries a maturity of 91 days. The expected return on the issue, which begins on 27 January 2010 and matures on 28 April 2010, is 1.05%.

Rapid growth among Saudi Arabia's Islamic insurers will benefit the domestic bond market but bypass dollardenominated issues due to regulations that keep insurers' investment close to home, experts and executives said.

Strong growth in the takaful, or insurance industry has underpinned hopes it will give a boost to the market for Islamic bonds, or sukuk.

Insurers are important investors in conventional fixed income markets, but sukuk have been mostly bought by Western investors such as hedge funds and banks.

In a presentation for the performance of the GCC banking sector, KIPCO Asset Management Company (KAMCO) Research Department presents a detailed analysis for the financial statements for 58 banks with the purpose of shedding the light on the repercussions of the crisis on the financial position of the banking sector in the GCC Region which represents a key sector for any country's economy.

Moreover, total provisions booked by the GCC banking sector since the start of the financial crisis in September 2008, have reached USD 11.7 billion of which USD 4.72 billion or 40% booked by Kuwaiti banks. It is worth noting that the provisions of Gulf Bank reached USD 1.76 billion, representing 37% of the total provisions booked by Kuwaiti banks since the start of the financial crisis in Sep-08.

Malaysia needs to develop a vibrant stock market to attract asset flow and support the growth of Islamic finance, first holder of the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF) chair of Islamic finance, Dr Abbas Mirakhor, said Friday.

Pakistan is due to pay $600 million on a maturing 5-year Euro Sukuk bond, on Tuesday, an SBP official said.

Highlighting the sound underlying investment strategy of its fund managers and innovative product development strategy, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority (DMCCA) announced today that its Shariah-compliant Dubai Shariah Asset Management (DSAM) Kauthar Commodity Funds recorded industry leading gains in the 12 months ending December 31, 2009. The DSAM Kauthar Commodity Fund (DKCF), an equally-weighted fund-of-funds comprised of four single-strategy, commodity-focused funds that invest exclusively in Shariah-compliant long/short equity hedge funds on the Al Safi Trust platform, was up 41 per cent at the end of last year. During the same period, DKCF managers returned roughly double the average return of their equity and commodity benchmarks. The fund-of-funds total assets under management stood at US$250.1 million as of December 31, 2009.

Malta should be in a position to issue guidelines on securities under Islamic finance law by the middle of the year, but there were still legal and technical problems to sort out with respect to banking, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said.

While the medium-term prospects for the global sukuk market remain strong, the prospects are weaker for Dubai-based issuers and potentially other countries in the Gulf. That’s the assessment of ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P), which also said that Malaysia and South East Asia were likely to lead the global sukuk market in issuance of the next couple of years.

Dubai Emirates NBD announced yesterday that the company has decided to discontinue use of Standard & Poor's (S&P) Investors Service for rating of its banking subsidiaries, Emirates Bank International (EBI) and National Bank of Dubai (NBD).

The Bank of Kuwait and the Middle East (BKME) expects 2010 to prove a year of major and strategic changes towards operation as an Islamic Sharia-compliant bank as of the second quarter, upon completion of procedures to obtain the required Amiri Decree approving the conversion.

Dawood Islamic Bank, Pakistan’s only double AA rated bank has completed its hat trick by inaugurating three more branches in Lahore.

Dear User,

as salamu alaikum,

In these days I am testing the new function of IslamicFinance.de: The Islamic Finance WIKI.

For long time I felt a need to have a proper encyclopaedia on Islamic finance, which is up to date and easily accessible for all industry members.

Now I started, initially with a small glossary, which I want to add up. Also from the start other experts are invited to contribute: Just in the same way as the famous online Wikipedia was created. We do not need 1.000.000 entries, but just about 1000 good entries would help spreading knowledge and improving best practice. With far more than 5,000 visitors to IslamicFinance.de each month pretty realistic, dont you think?

So, please visit:

http://wiki.islamicfinance.de

and share some comments.

Editing rights for the time (till I have got a team of volunteers) on manual request to avoid spamming (yes, IslamicFinance.de was already spammed with comments about non Sharia compliant activities...). Please indicate your background, it will not be stored on the website itself, just for me to avoid unpleasant vandalization of the site itself.

Rapid growth among Saudi Arabia's Islamic insurers will benefit the domestic bond market but bypass dollardenominated issues due to regulations that keep insurers' investment close to home, experts and executives said.

Masraf al Rayan, Qatar's fourth largest bank by market value, reported a fourth quarter profit of $76.96 million, an increase of 30 percent over the same period in 2008, according to Reuters calculations.

A new watchdog is to be launched to investigate suspected violations of Sharia-compliance among Islamic finance products, Arabian Business has learned.

The Bahrain Financial Exchange and Bursa Malaysia signed an agreement to study a common platform on which Islamic finance products such as commodity murabahas can be traded. Malaysia's stock exchange launched a platform last year on which murabaha, an Islamic money market instrument, can be traded using palm oil as the underlying commodity.

Press Release

San Francisco, USA-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb., 15th, 2010 – Khalijia Invest, a leading global Shari’ah compliant investment firm chaired by HH Prince Sultan Bin Mohammad bin Saud Al Kabeer and regulated by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) today announced that it has selected IdealRatings Inc., a global Shari’ah compliant fund management service provider to take full advantage of IdealRatings’ universe screening and Shari’ah compliant fund management service.

Khalijia Invest needed a robust, fully integrated Shari’ah compliant fund management service to streamline it Shari’ah funds investment process and analysis, and turned to IdealRatings for its integrated Shari’ah funds service capabilities.

IdealRatings enable portfolio managers to maximize Alpha through a detailed Shari’ah compliant universe research for more than 40,000+ equities in 100+ countries, which results in more than 12,000 + compliant equities. Dhafer Salih Alqahtani, EVP & Deputy CEO of Khalijia Invest asserted that “IdealRatings increase our efficiency and empower our portfolio managers to concentrate on generating more Alpha for our Investors”

KIPCO Asset Management Company (KAMCO) Research Department had carried out a presentation of the performance of GCC banking sector by analysing the financial statements for 58 banks with the purpose of shedding the light on the repercussions of the crisis on the financial position of the banking sector in the GCC Region which represents a key sector for any country's economy and the analysis revealed as follows:
During 2008, GCC banks have witnessed record levels of provision for doubtful loans where together recorded total provisions of USD 7.1 billion. Provisions booked during FY 2008 represent a notable 243% increase from those booked during 2007 which recorded USD 2.1 billion, while provisions that had been booked during 2006 recorded USD 1.44 billion

The limited availability of capital through conventional sources makes it all the more important that the oil and gas industry, in particular, consider alternative financing products. Shariah-compliant finance has the potential to unlock largely untapped liquidity in the Gulf and elsewhere that could add to and complement existing pools of capital required by the sector. (According to the Times of London, Shariah-compliant government bonds, known as sukuk bonds, comply with Islamic law, which forbids the earning of interest on money lent. Instead, bondholders receive “rent” on leasing government assets such as buildings. At the end of the bond term, the Treasury buys back the asset, releasing payments to the investor. Most Islamic financial products work on the principle of investing in a fixed asset able to generate a rate of return, such as property that yields rent, or an asset that can repay a larger capital sum on redemption.) In fact, only two months ago General Electric became the first Western industrial company to issue a sukuk bond, worth around $500 million.