From Emiratesfn.com: The 2001 September terror attacks in the United States have given rise to Islamic banks worldwide as Muslim investors kept their funds at home in&fear of any U.S. freeze decision, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.
But a stronger positive impact on the mushrooming of Islamic banks was the sharp rise in oil prices, which coincided with the September 11 attacks,&the IMF said in a study on Islamic banks published on its website this week……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Bloomberg: Emirates NBD PJSC of Dubai is waiving payments on personal loans for the holy month of Ramadan. Maybank Islamic Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur started automating charitable donations. Jakarta-based PT Bank Syariah Mandiri sponsors a television slot teaching Islamic banking.
Marketing campaigns aimed at reminding the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to follow the teachings of Prophet Muhammad that ban receiving interest have increased as the global economy recovers this year, according to the Pan Arab Research Center in Dubai……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Tradearabia.com: Qatar First Investment Bank’s (QFIB) private equity arm hopes to close a second deal in Turkey and is working on two other transactions in its home market, deputy chief executive Emad Mansour said on Monday.
Privately owned QFIB announced last week that it had acquired a 40 per cent stake in Turkey’s second-largest healthcare provider, Memorial Health Group, in a joint venture with London-based private equity house Argus Capital……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Gulf-times.com: Kuveyt Turk Katilim Bankasi is spearheading Turkey’s five-month-old Islamic bond market, planning a second sale of Shariah-compliant debt for 2012.
Kuveyt Turk, the Istanbul-based bank owned by Kuwait Finance House, may sell more than $100mn of five-year sukuk, after a similar size sale in August that was the first in the nation since regulators allowed companies to offer Islamic bonds, said chief executive officer Ufuk Uyan……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Tradearabia.com: The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) has announced that the monthly issue of its Sukuk Al-Salam Islamic securities has been oversubscribed.
Subscriptions worth BD73.5 million ($195 million) were received for the BD12 million issue, which carries a maturity of 91 days, the CBB said in a statement……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Gulfnews.com: More sovereign and top quality quasi-sovereign firms from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar are likely to issue debt before the end of 2010 as credit spreads tighten and investors regain confidence, a senior executive at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) said.
“Sovereign and top quality quasi-sovereign names from Abu Dhabi, Qatar are likely to tap bond markets before the year end. Dubai is meeting investors this week and that could be a precursor of a deal from them,” Hassan Mustafa, managing director and head of the debt syndicate of Central Eastern Europe Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) at RBS, told Zawya Dow Jones recently……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Thenational.ae: Islamic finance is a US$1 trillion (Dh3.67tn) industry and has become a part of the global financial system. The industry represents about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, as well as non-Muslim investors seeking to diversify their portfolios.
Institutional and private investors look to tap into a market that may reach a staggering $5tn, according to forecasts by the ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Deathby1000papercuts.com: Two companies in the financial world who turned their attention to Islamic finance and its phenomenal growth, Thomson Reuters (Reuters) and Bloomberg L.P.. Bloomberg’s market, Bloomberg’s financial news terminals. Reuter’s market, Reuter’s financial news portals.
Earlier we posted we were cynical about Mayor Bloomberg’s motives for defending the building of a controversial mosque near Ground Zero. Of concern, Bloomberg’s financial interests in the Middle East with Bloomberg L.P. establishing a financial information hub in Dubai at the Dubai International Finance Centre, DIFC……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From AP: Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a corporate officer in a defunct Islamic charity who is accused of taking $150,000 from an Egyptian donor, laundering it through the charity, and trying to send it to revolutionaries fighting to create an Islamic state in the Russian republic of Chechnya.
Pete Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, faces charges of conspiracy, tax fraud and failing to report sending $150,000 out of the country……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Opalesque: Shahzad Siddiqui is a Toronto-based lawyer and Chief Legal Officer at Broadwater Capital Inc, a Toronto-based Islamic finance firm. He was previously an investment banker at Ittihad Securities, an Islamic private equity firm in the same city. He is an author of several Euromoney publications including Sovereign Sukuk, co-written with a manager at the Ontario Financing Authority, and Fruits of the Orchard: Endowments for Mosques and Islamic Charitable Organisations in Western and Muslim Lands.
Toby Birch is Managing Director of Oppenheim and Co Limited (investment management) and Guernsey Gold Limited (bullion dealing). He is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment and also hold’s the Institute’s Islamic Finance Qualification. He is author of The Final Crash, one of the most prescient predictions of the credit crisis published in May 2007. He was previously CEO at Blackfish Capital Holdings where he managed a resources-based hedge fund and senior investment manager at Bank Julius Baer in Guernsey……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Opalesque: Mohammed Khnifer is regarded as part of a ’second generation’ of Islamic banking practitioners who have a solid academic background in Islamic finance. He is a holder of an MSc in Investment Banking & Islamic Finance from Reading University and is a Chartered Islamic Finance Professional (CIFP) from INCEIF. He is one of the most prolific and well-known journalist specializing in Islamic Finance today. For the past six years he has been in charge of the editorial content for the Islamic Banking section of Al Eqtisadiah (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).
Asset-backed or Asset-based Issuance? Sukuk is considered the most sought after financial instruments in the Islamic Finance industry. Western investors view them as debt-like fixed-income instruments, whereas Muslim investors purchase them as it complies with their religious beliefs, but at the same time serve their needs for relatively less-risk investments than equities or real estate……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Opalesque: Nikan has over 14 years experience in leading Wall Street and City firms on the buy and sell-side including Lehman Brothers, Goldman-Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Sanford Bernstein Alliance, Citadel and Nomura where he is currently Head of European Rates Strategy. He has worked in a variety of primarily technical or quantitative fixed income roles from Rates & Hybrids Structuring to Rates Strategy and Quantitative Modelling to Asset Allocation and Risk Management to Prepayment Analysis and Securitization and Capital Markets. Education: PhD Mathematics (Courant Institute, NYU), Asst Prof University of Illinois.
Structured Product, by its nature is something that can deliver diverse risky cashflows to investors. Delivering this to a conventional investor involves hedging, sometimes statically, sometimes dynamically with vanilla options, swaps and swaptions, basis and asset swaps, correlation products and a whole host of other ’slightly less exotic’ products. That being said, structured product is a huge business, one that generates large returns for banks (less so recently) and to a certain extent encourages Islamic Structuring desks to look for ways to deliver the same cashflows to Islamic investors……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Islamicfinanceasia.com: Despite the enormous economic strides made by the Islamic financial realm in recent years, Islamic funds have been substantially lagging behind. The recently published Islamic Funds & Investments Report 2010 by Ernst & Young revealed global Islamic fund assets barely grew in size at US$52.3 billion in 2009 compared to US$51.4 billion in 2008.
Overall, the Islamic asset management industry, including funds and Islamic investment accounts, has reached US$292 billion. In comparison, the global conventional fund industry is beginning to exhibit signs of recovery from their lows of US$19 trillion in 2008, reaching US$22 trillion in 2009……………………………………….Full Article: Source

From Reuters: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s invitation to hundreds of young women to convert to Islam overshadowed a two-day visit to Italy intended to cement the growing ties between Tripoli and Rome.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hailed Italy’s relationship with Libya at an evening ceremony on Monday attended by some of the biggest names in Italian business, many hoping to pick up lucrative contracts in the energy-rich North African state……………………………………….Full Article: Source