IIFM releases report on Shari'ah-compliant repurchase agreements (repos)

Conventional borrowers in the GCC are moving away from sukuk following the Dubai debt crisis. It is not said whether they are moving away from sukuk, which often have higher structuring costs, because of the structures or because the additional costs of structuring sukuk for issuers and a higher illiquidity premium makes it not cost competitive. Despite this there were 98 sukuk issued globally for $13.7 billion in the first half of 2010, up from $7.1 billion in the same period of 2009. S&P provided comments with their data release.

The IIFM released a paper on the possibilities for Islamic Repo transactions (I'aadat Al-Shira'a). You can download the paper from IIFM's website after going through the registration process. I hope to put up a post once I have a chance to read the document.

Other News

• Rushdi Siddiqui takes on the misguided "anti-Sharia" groups in the US who view Islamic finance as a threat.
  
• There is a video of my presentation at the UFANA conference in March in Toronto. It begins at about the 3:50 mark of this video and concludes at the beginning of this video.
  
• In a blog post on Monday I suggested that an article from Bloomberg describing falling yields on sukuk in the GCC was somewhat misleading and now Bloomberg's article that is similar to their earlier article is titled: "Persian Gulf Sukuk Yield Premium Widens on Fourth Default".
  
• Kazakhstan will issue a sukuk after cancelling a conventional bond sale.
  
• The American Prospect interviews Frank Vogel, who co-authored the book Islamic Law and Finance: Religion, Risk and Return with Samuel Hayes, both professors at Harvard University.
  
• A short video of a speech by the governor of Malaysia's central bank, Bank Negara, Zeti Akhtar Aziz.
  
• Khazanah Nasional is raising funds through 5- and 10-year sukuk to finance its bid for hospital operator Parkway Holdings Ltd.
  
• Indonesia's planned global sukuk will be smaller than the $650 million initially expected because the budget deficit is smaller than expected. An unnamed foreign bank is planning an Islamic banking service in Indonesia in the second half of 2010 according to the Head of Research, Development, and Sharia Banking Management of the central bank.
  
• Two Islamic banks in Pakistan became the first merger of two Islamic banks in the country. Emirates Global Islamic Bank and Al Baraka Islamic Bank will merge. The new bank will be called Al Baraka Bank (Pakistan) and will have combined assets of $582 million.