IslamicFinance.de

Dubai has overtaken other financial centres in listing Islamic bonds on its exchanges, and is mounting a global drive to attract more listings while developing new channels to trade sukuk, Hamed Ahmed Ali, the chief executive of Nasdaq Dubai said. The exchange is working on ways to sell sukuk directly to retail investors, expanding the primary market beyond institutional buyers, and designing a sharia-compliant repurchase agreement, he said. Until 2013, issuers from the Gulf usually chose European exchanges to list sukuk; that has begun changing. Unlike Europe, Dubai has a stable of local state-linked firms which can be encouraged to issue sukuk and list them locally. Also, Dubai is at the heart of a Muslim region, which both supplies sukuk and provides investor demand, Ali said.