IslamicFinance.de

As an exception to the banking sector single shareholder limit, the Central Bank has allowed one of the shareholders of Sri Lanka’s Amana Bank to own up to 30% of the issued shares of the bank. Currently IDB has 120.4 million shares or 9.62% stake in Amana Bank, Sri Lanka’s first non-interest based Islamic bank. In recent times, the Central Bank had allowed several banks to have their key shareholders own even beyond 70% such as in the case of Union Bank and Cargills Bank. But they must gradually bring those stakes down to the regulatory limits over time. Amana Bank is required to meet its minimum regulatory core capital of Rs.7.5 billion by June 30, 2017. Given the performance of the share price and the non-receipt of dividends, shareholders may not show appetite to contribute for any fresh capital calls by the bank.

A new milestone was reached by the Islamic finance industry of Sri Lanka. The first Shariahbased income fund for the country was recently launched. It has the structure of a unit trust. It will be followed by another unit trust - Adl Mudarabah Fund - which will be launched under the combined expertise of Adl Capital Limited and Comtrust Asset Management (Pvt.) Limited. The Trustee of the fund will be Deutsche Bank. Its role is to monitor all investments.