Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Doha Bank still planning renewable energy sukuk, the future of Shari'ah-compliant ETFs

Doha Bank still plans to issue a $1 billion sukuk to finance a GCC carbon trading market and other renewable energy investments like solar, although it continues to be delayed by turmoil in the global credit markets.

IndexUniverse.com discusses the potential for Shari'ah-compliant ETFs and compares the performance of the underlying MSCI World and MSCI World Islamic, as well as comparing the sector allocations of the two indices. There are ETFs tracking other indices and I think that the results would come out similar: Shari'ah-screened indices performed better than unscreened indices since the beginning of 2007; Shari'ah screens lead to overweighting in energy, materials and healthcare and underweighing in financials. The article goes on to discuss the future of Shari'ah-compliant which appears bright but still a little ways in the distance.

An article on what Mauritius needs to do to develop a more prominent place in the Islamic financial industry also includes a good description of the development of Islamic finance in Africa. Another article, focusing on the Islamic finance industry in Kenya, has a short discussion on Shari'ah-compliant securitization.

The U.K. paper the Times describes the growth in Islamic finance in Britain both among Muslims and non-Muslims.

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