issue 02 March / April 2010

The UK’s Baring Asset Management is launching a new fund targeting the Middle East and North Africa now that previously strict rules governing foreign investment and ownership in many of those markets are being relaxed. Barings, which has €31.8bn under management and almost half of this figure invested in emerging markets, opened its MENA fund to new investors in March. …

March 2010 was “the month of the emerging markets”. Both the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (DJIM) series and the conventional Dow Jones indexes saw composites from the Middle East and East Asia on the rise.After a humble 2010 debut, the Dow Jones Dubai Financial Market (DFM) Titans 10 Index was boosted by hearing that Dubai’s stateowned conglomerate Dubai World …

Al Hilal Bank is establishing its first operation outside the UAE . In March Kazakhstan’s Financial Markets Authority granted it an official licence to open the first Islamic bank in the country. The main headquarters are being established in the city of Almaty with a second branch in Astana, the capital. With a population of nearly 16 million, Kazakhstan possesses …

The International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM), the Bahrain-based organisation seeking to set standards for Islamic securities, may issue new global guidelines to facilitate the sale of Shariahcompliant bonds.  “There is no one, crossborder, common benchmark for sukuk,” IIFM’s chief executive officer Ijlal Ahmed Alvi said in March. “When there is a problem or a restructuring possibility, there is no precedent.” …

There may be little pick-up for some Gulf banks in 2010 following a bleak fiscal year in 2009 in which Kuwait saw the only increase in net profits in the region, at 70 per cent, while Bahrain’s banking sector posted the biggest decline, 35.23 per cent. Shuaa Capital, the UAE ’s largest investment bank, said in its UAE Vision 2010 …

The launch and listing of the first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) in the Gulf region took place in March thanks to the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD ) and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX).  The new fund, NBAD OneShare Dow Jones UAE 25 ETF, will follow the performance of the “Dow Jones UAE 25 Total Return Index” and provide …

Corporate treasurers around the world are still feeling quite bullish about 2010. That was just one of many findings about the health of the global business environment revealed in a quarterly business confidence survey from EuroFinance.  Among the key findings reported were:  The treasurers’ agenda is now changing. Immediately after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, “counterparty risk” was corporate treasurers’ …

Dear Reader,  One thing showing up very clearly in the crystal ball of commerce – affecting transaction banking in particular – is that the face of global trade is changing.  As we report in this issue, more than 150 fund managers, investors and bankers attended an HSBC conference in Dubai in March to hear global and regional economists and analysts …