Militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers Photo: AP As Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria butcher thousands of “infidels” and carry off their women and children into slavery, many in the West are inclined to see this as an unique outcrop of Islamic fundamentalism. Yet after overrunning a Bosnian town on 11th July 1995, Bosnian […]
Emirates NBD (ENBD), Dubai’s largest lender, plans to sell a benchmark-sized capital-boosting bond, a document from lead managers said on Monday, looking to take advantage of favourable markets to strengthen its reserves. ENBD has chosen Citigroup, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered and its own investment banking arm to arrange investor meetings ahead of a potential issue, the document said, confirming what banking sources told Reuters […]
|By TAP Staff|The global Sukuk industry is expected to be one of the fastest growing segments of the Islamic finance industry with huge growth potential in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, according to a report by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This is particularly true of Dubai where Sukuks are expected to play an important role over the next decade in securing funds for […]
Middle East funds are bullish on Saudi Arabia’s stock market despite concern it is getting richly valued, while they think the United Arab Emirates has bottomed out after a volatile few months, a Reuters survey showed. The Saudi stock market index has jumped 13 percent since authorities announced in late July that they would open the market to direct investment by foreign institutions in the first half […]
Hong Kong’s government will hold investor meetings next week for its maiden Islamic bond issue, a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said on Thursday. A meeting will be held in Hong Kong on Monday before one in Singapore on Tuesday, Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday and meetings in Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and London on Thursday. The AAA-rated government earlier mandated HSBC, Standard Chartered, CIMB Group […]
UAE. Dubai World, the state-owned company at the center of the emirate’s 2009 financial crisis, reached a deal with its main creditors to extend the repayment of $10.3 billion of debt, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The group, which owns the world’s third-largest ports operator, agreed with its creditor committee to repay in 2022, four years later than previously agreed on, the people said, […]
By Chuck Carnevale: Introduction Once an investor enters retirement it is not uncommon that their investment objective turns from total return to a safe income stream. And if they planned and prepared properly, the income they receive from their portfolios can support their families during their remaining so-called Golden years. Icing on the cake would be the potential for their income stream to grow. Although income growth […]
First-time sellers of bonds that adhere to Islam’s ban on interest are poised to revive an industry suffering its worst quarter in more than four years. Luxembourg and Hong Kong aim to market debut offerings of sukuk next month, while Kenya, South Africa, Bangladesh and Tatarstan have announced plans for maiden issues. Islamic bond sales have fallen 82 percent to $2.6 billion this quarter compared with the […]
DP World Jebel Ali, UAE. DP World After posting a decent set of numbers in the first half, a company can be excused if it sounds optimistic about its growth outlook. In DP World’s case – the numbers are more than decent. The Dubai-based ports operator, one of the largest globally, reported a solid 26% jump in six-month earnings as it added new capacity amid a pick […]
Two months ago, the U.K. became the first Western nation to sell Islamic bonds. But missing from the list of advisers and arrangers on the £200 million transaction were any of the country’s six shariah-compliant banks. One of them, Bank of London and the Middle East, doesn’t appear to have any hard feelings about it and applauds the rise in sovereign sukuks as they will help accelerate […]
A revival of international bond issues from the Gulf is set to draw heavy demand from local and foreign investors, despite the latest geopolitical upheavals in the Middle East and the approach of higher U.S. interest rates. Gulf bond issuance has dried up since early July, because of a traditional summer lull in local investor activity as well as global market instability due to the crisis in […]
By Lowell Herr: As an experiment I set out to test the SHY cutoff model with a group of Dividend Aristocrat stocks. The SHY model is explained in detail in this Seeking Alpha article. In the software I used for this experiment I had spots for nine stocks plus SHY. To fill those nine openings I pulled down a list of Dividend Aristocrat securities and selected the […]
By Adam Hamilton: Gold has slid during this past week on mounting fears of interest-rate hikes. Between the latest FOMC meeting’s minutes and the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, American futures speculators’ rising-rate phobias have been whipped into a fever pitch. They worry gold will be crushed when the Fed eventually starts normalizing rates. But history shatters this fallacy that rising rates are gold’s nemesis. […]
Mumbai: Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) has allowed insurance companies to invest in onshore rupee bonds issued by Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank. IFC had sent a representation to Irda to permit insurers to invest in onshore rupee bonds to be issued by it…. This content is for Monthly, Annual, Free Trial and Basic members only. […]
Local lenders in Saudi Arabia are dominating the market, prompting overseas banks to surrender their licenses as they struggle to compete, the chief executive officer of Standard Chartered (STAN) Plc in the country said. “International banks have found this market more challenging to find their edge and differentiate themselves enough to build a viable business,” Boutros Klink, chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Capital Saudi Arabia, said […]
Indonesia has announced a series of investor meetings starting on August 19 as it moves ahead with plans to issue Islamic bonds, or sukuk. CIMB, Emirates NBD, HSBC and Standard Chartered will arrange meetings in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, finishing in Dubai and Abu Dhabi on August 25. Indonesia is expected to raise US$1bn-$1.5bn from the global sukuk as early as next week, kicking off […]
LONDON, August 15 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings has affirmed Abu Dhabi’s Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at ‘AA’. The Outlooks are Stable. The issue ratings on Abu Dhabi’s senior unsecured foreign and local currency bonds have also been affirmed at ‘AA’. The Short-term foreign currency IDR has been affirmed at ‘F1+’. The UAE Country Ceiling has been affirmed at ‘AA+’; this Ceiling also applies […]
Shares of Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (TAQA), which took an impairment of $858 million in North America last year, climbed the most in three weeks after it returned to profit in the second-quarter and said it plans to sell assets. The state-controlled utility, also known as Taqa, reported a second-quarter attributable profit of 239 million dirhams ($65 million), rebounding from a loss of 172 million a […]
Sanctions on Russia over the crisis with Ukraine are leading banks to call for the development of Islamic finance as they seek alternatives to European and U.S. pools of funding. The expansion of the Shariah-compliant industry would let the country attract fresh capital from the Middle East and Asia, the Association of Russian Banks said this week in response to an inquiry from the state bank. The […]
Dubai’s two biggest builders are turning to bank borrowing to help fund projects as a rise in late payments from their customers takes the shine off a booming construction market. Arabtec Holding PJSC, the contractor that helped push Dubai stocks into a bear market in June, said money owed by clients rose to 8.8 billion dirhams ($2.4 billion) through the second quarter from 7.2 billion dirhams at […]
London-based Gatehouse Bank is developing new business lines and widening its investor base as the Islamic wholesale lender looks to build a more stable revenue stream, its chief executive said. Gatehouse, one of Britain’s six full-fledged Islamic banks, is joining several of its peers in broadening its scope, after the country’s Islamic finance sector got a boost from the government’s first issue of an Islamic bond in […]
Jebel Ali Free Zone FZE, a business park operator in Dubai, is cutting the price on a 2.2 billion-dirham ($599 million) Islamic loan by half as funding costs decline, according to three bankers familiar with the deal. The interest rate on the loan for the company known as Jafza will be reduced to 150 basis points, or 1.5 percentage points, over the Emirates interbank offered rate from […]
Luxembourg will start meeting investors in the next two months to drum up support for a debut sale of shariah compliant bonds as sukuk sales surge worldwide. The country, which has an AAA credit rating at Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, is planning to become the second non-Muslim nation to issue a sovereign Islamic bond after the U.K. raised 200 million pounds ($335 […]
Mumbai: After witnessing decline in profit for six consecutive quarters, State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, reported 3.3 per cent net profit growth to Rs 3,349 crore for the quarter ended June, compared to Rs 3,241 crore in the corresponding period of last year. Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairman, SBI, said: “Pressure (on asset quality) appears to be subsiding. But we need to see a pick-up in the economy to see appreciable changes in asset quality.” Net interest income grew 15 per cent to Rs 13,252 crore and fee income growth was 11 per cent to Rs 2,837 crore, though there was a fall in treasury income. The profitability got a boost of Rs 6,000 crore from sale of stressed assets to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) during the q
