IslamicFinance.de

Dana Gas invited holders of its outstanding sukuk to open discussions on restructuring the payment. The reason given by Dana Gas was that the sukuk has now been declared non-syariah compliant and, therefore, not valid. The company also proposed to exchange the sukuk with a new four-year enforceable, syariah-compliant instrument. It seems that Dana Gas is trying to restructure cheap on the back of credit deterioration, hiding behind the façade of syariah validity. Moreover, the company has filed for protection in the Federal Court in Sharjah to impose its structuring plan on certificate holders. It is obvious that the sukuk debacle may have serious implications for Dubai’s ambitions of being a premier sukuk origination and Islamic economy hub. The Dana Gas sukuk is a failure of inadequate capital market legal framework, underdeveloped regulatory framework and a serious lack of uniformity.