Thursday bullets

• Dubai World formally presented its restructuring plan to creditors for $23.5 billion in debts. A Reuters article presents an analysis of what could come following a successful restructuring.
  
• A Bloomberg article describes the rally in Petronas sukuk, which are held by many conventional funds around the world. Petronas' sukuk is now yielding 3.13%, well below its 4.25% coupon.
  
• Bloomberg has an article on the Cagamas sukuk, which is structured to be acceptable in both Malaysia and the GCC.
  
• Citigroup is considering opening Shari'ah-compliant microfinance banks in Pakistan.
  
• The fund manager of the BLME Shari'ah USD Income Fund believes that there will be a revival in sukuk issuance starting this fall.
  
• There is another article on the struggles of the domestic Islamic finance industry in the UK which ends with a grim assessment: "Either way, it doesn’t seem like Shariah-compliant offerings in Europe will be the big boon many had expected a few years ago." I wrote a post on the issue comparing it with the US on Tuesday.
  
• Lahem al-Nasser writes that Islamic windows of conventional banks are viewed with suspicion by Islamic banking clients and it would benefit the industry for CIBAFI to commission a poll of Islamic bank's clients about attitudes towards Islamic windows.
  
• Chase Bank in Kenya is launching Islamic banking products.
  
• A spokesman for the government of Kazakhstan said the government is still "studying the possibility of selling Islamic bonds" despite a Finance Ministry statement that Kazakhstan's banks will not sell bonds overseas this year, removing the need for the government to issue a benchmark bond.
  
• A unit of Qatar-based property developer Barwa Real Estate received $3.5 billion in two murabaha facilities from Qatari Diar Finance. $1 billion will mature in 2015 and the remaining $2.5 billion will mature in 2020.
  
• Kuwait Finance House reported profits for the second quarter was up 22%. The profit was lower than what was reported by a newspaper citing an unidentified source last week.