Baraka Bank in Egypt will launch an Islamic Credit Card product for the first time in Egypt in the second quarter of the next year, ECO of the Barak Bank Ashraf al-Ghamarawi said. The bank will launch all kinds of the credit cards including platinum, silver and gold, especially after considering the Egyptian market.
The product is accepted by agents of the Egyptian market although there is a difficult situation with the Egyptian economy after the Egyptian January 25 Revolution, al-Ghamarawi said………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Gulf International Bank (GIB) has completed the pricing and closing of a three-year $300 million Sukuk Al Murabaha private placement. The sukuk certificates will pay a profit rate of six-month US dollar Libor plus 130 base points on a semi-annual basis, and will mature on December 7, 2014.
The sukuk offering was successfully placed with a number of institutional investors, with JP Morgan acting as sole manager of the placement. “We are delighted with the successful closing of our inaugural placement in the Islamic sukuk market, and securing an attractive pricing despite the volatile market backdrop,” said GIB chief executive Dr Yahya Alyahya………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The National Treasury has invited banking institutions to submit proposals for the provision of advisory services for the structuring and issuance of a government Sukuk in the local and international markets.
The invitation is in line with the South African National Treasury’s intention to diversify its funding and investor base. “There is a great interest in the SUKUK market and this is the first step towards meeting the growing appetite for government backed Shari’ah-compliant investments” said Lungisa Fuzile, Director General of the National Treasury………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Indonesia’s central bank sold its nine-month SBI debt on Thursday at a 5.03858 percent rate, lower than 5.22412 percent in last month’s auction, absorbing liquidity more than expected. Bank Indonesia (BI) also sold its nine-month sharia SBI debt at the same rate. It sold 27.29 trillion rupiah ($3.02 billion) of SBIs and 382 billion rupiah of sharia SBIs.
BI kept its benchmark overnight rate at a record low 6 percent on Thursday as anticipated, pausing because it expects recent rate cuts to help to stimulate the domestic economy next year as global growth slows………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Nakheel, the developer of Dubai’s palm-shaped islands, said on Thursday it has made payments to the tune of Dh7.3 billion ($2 billion) to its trade creditors.
The Dubai-based company had paid Dh5 billion to trade creditors in June, followed by Dh4.8 billion Islamic bonds to its contractors and suppliers in August. Nakheel will issue another Dh1 billion of sukuk before the end of this year as part of its Dh59 billion restructuring deal with trade creditors………………………………………..Full Article: Source

With the widespread availability of financing after the liberalisation of financial sector, insurance is fast becoming a necessity in Pakistan. Car financing, for example, by banks and other forms of lending by banks and other financial institutions require the borrowers to buy insurance on the items purchased through financing.
While shari’a compliant financing is now widely available from the fully-fledged Islamic banks like Meezan, Dubai Islamic, Bank Islami and others and from conventional banks like Muslim Commercial Bank, Bank Al Falah etc, the same cannot be said for shari’a compliant insurance, which is still at an initial stage of development………………………………………..Full Article: Source

BMI Bank signs strategic agreement with newly formed joint partnership between Allianz Group and Medgulf to offer customers a complete suite of life and non-life insurance products.
The service, offered under the bank’s recently formed bancassurance umbrella, will be available to both Bahrainis and expatriates. The agreement was signed by BMI Bank’s Chief Executive Officer Jamal Al-Hazeem and Dr. Abdullah Mansury, the General Manager of Medgulf Allianz Takaful………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Great Eastern Takaful, one of Malaysia’s top Islamic insurers, has announced that it will be expanding its presence across the Indonesian border in 2012. GE Takaful hopes that by moving into the nascent Islamic insurance market in the world’s most populous Muslim state that it will rapidly assume a top three market position.
Local press reported that GE Takaful would initially start operating in Indonesia through its existing bancaTakaful agency agreement with OCBC NISP Bank – an Indonesian subsidiary of Singapore’s OCBC Bank………………………………………..Full Article: Source

United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s leading businesswomen are looking into investment opportunities to work with Malaysians in two areas - Islamic finance and halal food.
President of the Abu Dhabi Business Women Council and chief operating officer of Al Jaber Group Fatima Al Jaber said Islamic finance and halal food were the two mutual areas that Malaysia and UAE could work together………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Malaysian are invited to participate in various business sectors in Kazakhstan, particularly halal food and Islamic finance.
Kazakhstan Ambassador to Malaysia B. Atamkulov said the two sectors offered huge growth potential as the majority of the country’s population were Muslims. Atamkulov also said he would like to see Malaysian products flowing directly into Kazakhstan rather than getting them from third parties………………………………………..Full Article: Source

As European banks withdraw from the Gulf loan market, they are leaving a gap which other banks are unlikely to fill completely – ushering in an era of fewer, smaller and more expensive loans even as companies’ need to refinance their debt grows.
Lending in the region, which was already down on levels seen in the boom before Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, has been curtailed severely in the second half of this year by the eurozone debt crisis………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) is pulling back from international markets and focusing on domestic growth as bad loans rise and it tries to curb expenses, the lender said in an updated prospectus for a bond programme launched three years ago.
ADCB sold its first sukuk last month, a $500 million issue, but the bank said the update to its prospectus did not portend further sales. “This filing is done to keep the programme updated, and ADCB currently has no plans to tap the wholesale markets,” Kevin Taylor, the bank’s treasurer, told Bloomberg News………………………………………..Full Article: Source

BASF, The Chemical Company, is now listed on the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index (DJIM). The listing places the company into a global universe of investable equities that have been screened for Shari’ah compliance consistent with Dow Jones Indexes’ methodology. The listing underlines BASF’s commitment to growth in the Middle East region, where it has expanded its presence significantly over the last decade and has recently made significant long term investments in manufacturing infrastructure.
The DJIM listing is a welcome recognition of not just the strength of our brand in the region and the interest of Shari’ah-compliant investors, but of our philosophy to abide by the highest ethical standards in all our dealings, and respect the cultural mores of our customers in every geography that we enter. (Press Release)

Harvard University has decided to remove courses taught by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy at its annual summer school session, terming his views as ” reprehensible” in a controversial piece he wrote on Islamic terrorism in India.
At a meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, faculty members voted with an “overwhelming majority” to remove two economics courses - ‘Quantitative Methods in Economics and Business’ and ‘Economic Development in India and East Asia’ - that Swamy teaches. In a July op-ed piece for an Indian publication, Swamy had recommended demolishing hundreds of mosques and suggested that only Muslims in India who “acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus” should be allowed to vote. ……………………………………….Full Article: Source