Tuesday, June 19, 2007

KFH expansion, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey & Shari'ah scholars

Kuwait Finance House, the Kuwaiti Islamic bank, will expand within the Middle East to Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar and may also look to expand in Asia. Currently, KFH operates only in Malaysia. The expansion will be funded by the recent $1.06 billion share sale.

The number of Malaysian Islamic banks continues to grow even as the conventional sector works to consolidate. This article is also available from Business Times as a pdf file.

CIMB Islamic appointed Sheikh Nizam Yaquby to its Shari'ah Supervisory Board for the next two years. Sh. Yaquby is a member of over 40 Islamic financial institutions' Shari'ah boards. The company's investment banking business will also triple its Islamic private equity funds.

The DIFC listing of its $1.25 billion sukuk on the DIFC pushes the amount of sukuk over the $10 billion mark.

Central Bank of Bahrain governor Rasheed Al-Maraj believes the Islamic finance industry needs to acheive greater harmonization to succeed.

Indonesian's second largest lender, PT Bank Central Asia Tbk, plans to enter the Islamic finance industry through an acquisition of two smaller lenders.

Turkey's Islamic banks (participation banks) are growing rapidly.

1 comment:

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