Thirty-three Middle East banks are among 500 of the world’s most trusted banks, according to a new study. READ MORE HERE

Will 2012 be the year of “come together” consolidation for Islamic banks?

Size is often the justification for achieving economies of scale, used to access deals for league table prominence, used as a buffer in a challenging environment, used as defensive measure to ward off unwanted suitors, and so on.

Islamic banks are very much like Islamic (equity) funds. There are hundreds of Islamic banks and funds, but the paid-up capital and assets under management, respectively, is too small to be meaningful. Yet, both, more so Islamic banks, present a unique situation (of an industry risk) of “too small to fail”.

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Deleveraging in EU banks is one of the many issues impacting the ME economies in the 2012. Tourism, trade, investment and oil exports could also suffer as the EU crisis unravels.

All eyes are fixed on the European Union these days, as the region remains mired in a sovereign debt crisis that threatens the very future of the economic bloc. READ MORE HERE

By Rushdi Siddiqui, Global Head of Islamic Finance at Thomson Reuters

The time has arrived to take a deeper dive on better understanding of Shariah compliant companies in an Islamic (or Shariah compliant) equity indexes. To many informed and uninformed observers of Islamic equity investing, it seems to imply investing in publicly listed companies in Muslim countries.

The end results contradict the assumptions. This also rebuts the often heard allegations by many from the anti-Shariah movement that Islamic investing is about investing in companies linked to terrorism or financing terrorism. The largest companies in the S&P Global BMI Shariah include ExxonMobil, IBM, Chevron, Nestle, Microsoft, etc.
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Deutsche Bank is bullish about next year, i.e. if Europe does not capitulate, the United States does not return to its poor growth and Asia does not suffer a hard landing.

In the eyes of Deutsche Bank analysts, Europe holds the key to global growth. Admittedly, this is slightly myopic thinking given that the world does not revolve around the EU. We have already seen the United States and Asia chug along even as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy imploded one after
the other. Perhaps that’s a natural home bias of all OECD banks. READ MORE HERE

From a position of chronic under-supply, the Abu Dhabi real estate market is suddenly oversupplied, which is hurting developers, banks and the end investors.

While the country and the emirate has taken certain regulatory steps to stem the slide, it seems an uphill battle, with analysts expecting a turn around only after another two years. READ MORE HERE

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today that issuers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries face rising refinancing risks over the next three years because the amount of debt maturing in the region will increase significantly between 2012-2014.

Industry experts estimate bonds and sukuk of about $25 billion will mature in 2012, rising to about $35 billion in 2014. Standard & Poor’s believes the region is therefore entering a challenging loan and bond refinancing cycle, especially given the ongoing volatility in capital markets and fears that slowing global economic growth is already curbing corporate debt issuance and heightening refinancing risk in the region.
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Major international banks from the United States and the European Union are selling off units, restructuring, recapitalising, and shrinking their operations as they comply with stricter regulatory regimes and face poor economic growth in their main markets. In this context, the Gulf, which at one point was an exotic new outpost brimming with petrodollars, no longer seem like an irresistible proposition.
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