IslamicFinance.de

The local unit of HSBC Holdings is advising Saudi Arabia’s Public Pension Agency on the sale of its struggling financial hub to the country’s sovereign wealth fund. The Public Investment Fund is offering to acquire the Riyadh district for less than the pension fund’s 30 billion riyals ($8 billion) investment. The wealth fund is being advised by JPMorgan Chase, but a deal hasn’t been reached yet. The King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) is about 70% complete and is failing to attract its target clientele, banks, auditors and lawyers. The sale is meant to rehabilitate the 1.6 million square-meter district which includes over 70 buildings. The district will become a special economic zone with looser visa rules and direct links to Riyadh airport as part of plans to restructure the development.

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation hired three banks for a local-currency sukuk. The Saudi Arabian affiliate of HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), National Commercial Bank’s investment banking unit and Standard Chartered Plc will manage the sukuk sale. NCB Capital and Standard Chartered bid jointly for the mandate. It was not specified how much the authority sought to raise, neither was the timing of the sale. GACA said last year it plans to issue a second tranche of notes to fund an airport expansion in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The company sold Islamic debt last year at 2.5 percent and used proceeds to finance an airport expansion in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

Saudi Electricity Co has chosen Deutsche Bank and HSBC Holdings to schedule meetings with fixed income investors from Europe and North America for possible debt agreements. The meetings would be considered as road shows, with the first to be held on March 19 in Los Angeles, CA and would end in London, UK by March 25 of this year. After these road shows, a dollar denominated bond issue would then follow depending on market conditions.

The Government of Dubai mandated five banks to arrange a benchmark-sized, dollar-denominated Islamic bond which is expected to price on Tuesday in the low four percent area. The mandated banks to arrange the deal are Dubai Islamic Bank, Emirates NBD, HSBC Holdings, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Standard Chartered.

According to HSBC Holdings, bond sales by Gulf government-related companies will experience growth at the beginning of next year. Thus, more than $1trn can be invested in different planned projects. Georges Elhedery, head of global markets for the Middle East and North Africa at HSBC, supports the opinion that the optimistic attitude is very reasonable.

Just as HSBC Holdings announced it would shrink its Islamic banking operations in a number of countries, the National Bank of Abu Dhabi made plans to increase the contribution of its Shariah-compliant operations three times over the next eight years. Thus, it becomes clear that HSBC's move is nothing but a sign of its own priorities. While it is set to continue its operations mainly in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia with a limited presence in Indonesia, local banks have the opportunity to step in for it.

Read more on: http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/business/211368-gulf-islamic-banks-ready-to...

It seems that Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (Adib) rose the most in three months, as the country's second-biggest Sharia-compliant lender continued with its roadshow to sell a $500 million five-year sukuk.
The sale will be oragnized by Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, Standard Chartered, Nomura and National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

According to two bank sources, HSBC Holdings and Deutsche Bank were picked for a potential dollar-denominated bond issue by Saudi Electricity Co.
They couldn't say when this will happen.