Islamic Finance

A new law in Saudi Arabia will be a game changer for the housing finance and real estate development market and will propel Islamic finance to the next level in the Kingdom. MUSHTAK PARKER explains Judging by the burgeoning number of transactions successfully closed and the utterings of senior officials and bankers in Saudi Arabia this year, it is easy …

MUSHTAK PARKER looks at a unique new fund raising and liquidity option that has been taking MENA by storm One of the ongoing consequences of the global financial crisis has been a sustained credit crunch in economies all over the world as liquidity remains scarce and financing is targeted at “safe” customers by an over-cautious global financial sector. This, despite …

Governments across the Middle East are now looking for ways to help SMEs. MUSHTAK PARKER, looks at what’s in store Small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of many Middle East and North Africa (MENA) economies. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, governments are seeking to generate employment, especially youth employment, and economic growth to try to mitigate the …

The world’s first Islamic finance benchmark rate, designed to provide an objective and dedicated indicator for the average expected return on Shariah-compliant short-term interbank funding, has been launched by Thomson Reuters. The Islamic Interbank Benchmark Rate (IIBR), announced at the 18th annual World Islamic Banking Conference in Bahrain, uses the contributed rates of 16 Islamic banks and the Islamic sections …

The doom and gloom precipitated in 2008 by the global financial crisis and more recently by the eurozone sovereign debt crisis will continue unabated through 2012, and the impact on the global markets will equally not be spared. MUSTAK PARKER reports

In a move designed to help Turkish investors and contractors doing business in the member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC), and Turk Eximbank, Turkey’s National Export-Import Credit Bank, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the annual meeting of the Aman Union (the association …

MUSHTAK PARKER reports on 
a ‘man with a mission’, whose aim is to promote arbitration Sundra Rajoo is a man with a mission. As director of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration (KLRCA) he has been mandated by Bank Negara Malaysia, the central bank, to promote arbitration in Islamic finance both in the region and beyond. Consistent with the …

Kuwaiti-based GNL has become ‘the world’s first Shariah-compliant insurance broker offering premium takaful and re-takaful commercial risk solutions in the UK capital’. In this exclusive report, MUSHTAK PARKER charts the background and reveals the future Can you imagine a priest or rabbi encouraging a financial institution to engineer a specific product to fill the need of a potentially huge gap …

Global recovery is not just about economic fundamentals – it is also about regaining confidence. MUSHTAK PARKER feels a number of pulses While the past year has seen a rebound of sorts for the global Islamic finance industry, prospects for 2011 are at best mixed with the consolidation of the recovery especially of the Sukuk market and core business lines, …

Noor Islamic Bank’s highly successful growth rate since its inception in 2007 highlighted the need to address the impact that manual operations had on its overall business. A combination of increasing transaction volumes, more complex financial instruments and reconciliations with smaller processing windows led the bank to conclude that it needed to update its reconciliation and exception management solutions. A …