Dubai Electricity & Water Authority plans to raise as much as $1 billion from the sale of Islamic bonds this month to refinance debt maturing in June, Chief Executive Officer Saeed Al Tayer said.
The state-owned utility, known as Dewa, mandated Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Citigroup Inc., Standard Chartered Plc, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank PJSC, Emirates NBD Capital Ltd. and Dubai Islamic Bank PJSC, to help manage the sale, Al Tayer said. Meetings with potential investors will be held in London and Asia next week, he said…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Indonesia’s finance ministry raised 1.05 trillion rupiah ($108.47 million) of sharia bonds at an auction on Tuesday, lower than a target of 1.5 trillion rupiah. The government sold project-based sukuk maturing in five and 24 years, with total incoming bids of 2.264 trillion rupiah.
Yields were little changed from the previous auction earlier this month.. The highest bid-to-cover ratio was 1.98 for its five-year project-based sukuk…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Shareholders of Dana Gas , the Abu Dhabi-listed energy firm, will vote on March 14 to approve a restructuring plan for its US$920m sukuk after failing to meet maturity of the Islamic bond last year.
Dana became the first company in UAE to miss repayment of a maturing bond on October 31 but agreed new terms with a creditor committee representing bondholders, which included investment firms Ashmore Group and BlackRock, a week later…………………………………….Full Article: Source

The new Sukuk law will be approved on Wednesday by the cabinet before being referred to the Shura Council on the same day, said Ahmed El-Najjar, member of the economic committee at the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and advisor to the minister of finance.
“The new law is entirely different from the previous one,” he said. “It will not be called an ‘Islamic sovereign sukuk law’; just ‘sukuk law’.” “This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t respect Islamic legislation,” he continued. “On the contrary, the first article of the law mentions that it is fully Sharia-compliant, and it will have a special [Sharia] committee to oversee its implementation.”……………………………………Full Article: Source

The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many, says John Naisbitt, best-selling author and futurist. But, what do we know about sukuk? It’s often described as a bond, but it’s not a conventional bond. It is often described with pride and a sense of accomplishment for its issuance (in the case of Malaysia) and the London Stock Exchange for its listing.
The sukuk is the foundation of investment vehicles like today’s sukuk funds, and, hopefully, tomorrow’s sukuk exchange-traded funds. It has encountered defaults, bankruptcies, and restructurings. It has become the alter ego of debt capital market bias, Islamic finance…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Malaysia’s biggest sukuk arrangers say sales by local companies will surpass 2012’s record this year as US$35 billion of construction projects come on stream.
Issuance has reached RM10.4 billion (S$4.16 billion) in 2013, compared with RM33.6 billion in the same period a year earlier and the all-time high of RM95.8 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Growth in the building market will strengthen this year following an 18 per cent increase in 2012, according to Construction Industry Development Board Malaysia……………………………………Full Article: Source

Alibank is planning to launch the Sultanate’s first Islamic fund for the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region. The bank is waiting for regulatory approvals from both Central Bank of Oman and Capital Market Authority.
“We are planning to raise the fund from Oman and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, using the facilities of our group institutions,” Abdulaziz al Balushi, chief executive officer of ahlibank, told Times of Oman. The corpus money raised by the fund will be invested predominantly in Oman, and a portion in the Gulf region…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Turkey and the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) have the most Islamic finance friendly tax systems out of eight countries in the MENA region, according to a study by three leading experts, Mohammed Amin, Salah Gueydi and Hafiz Choudhury, and sponsored by Qatar Financial Centre Authority in partnership with the International Tax and Investment Centre, based in Washington DC.
The study goes on to examine two alternative approaches a country can take to update its tax system to support Islamic finance transactions (referred to in the study as the UK model and the Malaysian model), and concludes by recommending the one that is adopted in Malaysia as being quicker and simpler to implement for Muslim majority countries…………………………………….Full Article: Source

With the platform for an Islamic finance offering in Hong Kong almost complete, what are the prospects for the growth of the Islamic finance sector in Hong Kong? Bryant Edwards, Craig Nethercott and Nomaan Raja ask whether the region has the capacity to foster an Islamic finance sector.
The Arabic exclamation ‘shwaya – shwaya’ (or ‘little by little’) comes to mind when one reviews the progress of Hong Kong towards establishing itself as an Islamic finance hub in Asia. Since 2007 Hong Kong has been focused on the need to develop a fiscal environment to encourage and sustain an Islamic finance offering. Meanwhile, the global sukuk market has continued its rapid growth with the value of sukuk issues in 2012 said to have reached over US$121 billion…………………………………….Full Article: Source

According to a recent Thomson Reuters Sukuk Perceptions and Forecast Study, Oman ranked first in the largest survey of its kind of both Shari’a compliant investors and capital arrangers, ahead of Egypt, Kazakhstan, Tunisia and Libya, all of which are establishing regulations for Shari’a compliant finance.
With support from the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions (CIBAFI) and Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI), a member of the Islamic Development Bank group, Thomson Reuters will be holding a forum in Oman investigating what needs to be done to facilitate the country’s entry to global Islamic financial markets…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Despite the claims by proponents of Islamic finance that there is a “pent-up demand” for Islamic financial products, in reality there seems to be a growing disinterest in such products. Regardless, the proponents continue to argue for adjusting the conventional secular financial system to sharia, regardless the market’s dwindling interest.
The decision by HSBC late in 2012 to significantly downsize its worldwide Islamic banking operations serves to illustrate the point. According to Reuters , HSBC made the decision despite being one of the pioneers in developing Islamic finance within the international banking sector. In 2012, HSBC was the first Western bank to issue an Islamic bond, when Its Middle East unit sold a US $500 million sukuk…………………………………….Full Article: Source

Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) and Ernst & Young have entered into an exclusive agreement to carry out certification of financial software products or core banking systems for Islamic banking and finance industry.
The certification program will see AAOIFI and Ernst & Young working together in benchmarking financial software products or core banking systems against AAOIFI’s Shari’a and Accounting standards. Under the certification program, banking and financial information technology providers will have the opportunity to properly incorporate AAOIFI standards in their products and systems…………………………………….Full Article: Source