Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sukuk: past and present; UK cancels plans for sovereign sukuk

Andy Jobst, Heiko Hesse and Juan Sole wrote an article looking at both the startlingly high growth rate of sukuk through 2007 and the significant fall off so far this year which is expected to continue well into 2009.

Seera Investment Bank has a white paper (pdf) on Shari'ah-compliant private equity.

News continues to emerge that the Islamic finance industry may not fully escape the global recession caused by the credit crisis because of its dependence on real estate to back sukuk. This creates problems in diversifying against a fall in prices in that sector. There should be several mergers along the lines of Amlak and Tamweel.

Germany lags behind the U.K. in facilitating Islamic finance. The U.S. has flip-flopped in the Treasury Department's public engagement educating its staff about Islamic finance. Meanwhile, the Islamic finance industry has grown across the country. Although it has led the way in placing Islamic finance on a level playing field with conventional finance, it recently cancelled plans to issue a sovereign sukuk, although it still is working with its Islamic Finance Working Group. Hong Kong is still wants to encourage Islamic finance and Singapore continues to plan for a sukuk issuance.

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