IslamicFinance.de

Global standards are likely to become more explicit and a shift to centralised regulation may accelerate after Dana Gas reached a conditional deal with creditors on its contested $700mn sukuk issue. Dana shook the industry last June, saying it would not redeem its sukuk on maturity. It proposed swapping them for new sukuk with lower profit rates. The original sukuk used a mudaraba structure, which Dana said had fallen into disuse. Investors have been worried by the prospect of other issuers avoiding redeeming their sukuk by saying conditions have changed. According to Akram Laldin, deputy chairman of the Malaysian central bank, the Dana saga had strengthened the case for setting up centralised bodies that could approve Islamic contracts and rule on disputes. The Dana case appears to mean the end of the old mudaraba sukuk structure, criticised as un-Islamic by some scholars due to features such as guarantees on principal and fixed returns.

Bahrain-based Waqf Fund hosted its eighth Shari'a Scholar session with Islamic finance scholar Professor Dr. Akram Laldin from Malaysia. Dr. Laldin serves on several Shari'a Boards including Bank Negara Malaysia's Shari'a Advisory Council, AAOIFI and a number of Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia and globally. The topic under discussion was "The Challenges of Achieving Shari'a Compliance in Islamic Finance". Dr. Laldin made a presentation on the key challenges in Shari'a compliance and narrated a number of real life cases from his experience as a Shari'a Board member. This was followed by an interactive session during which the participants asked questions and gave their comments.