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Maybank Islamic Bhd will provide RM20 million of seed capital to a Waqf Fund which will be invested into investment portfolios, to include fixed income, equities, balanced fund and real estate. The local financial institution said that majlis Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan (MAIWP) will be the trustee of the Waqf fund while the bank will be the project manager. Profits or capital yield from the investment portfolio will be used to fund programmes related to development of educational and health care infrastructures, as well as to develop young entrepreneurs. Maybank Islamic Chief Executive Officer, Muzaffar Hisham said Waqf was one of the potential investments which can be developed to fund various economic activities for the benefit of the community.

Due to unavoidable circumstances, the date of the 8th ISDEV International Conference on Islamic Development Management (IDMAC 2014) themed Islamic Political Economy previously scheduled on 2nd-3rd December 2014 is now changed to 9th-10th December 2014. Venue and time remain. ISDEV apologizes for any inconveniences that this change of date may cause.

The Muslim world needs to develop a revolutionary method in Islamic finance to allow entrepreneurs and financiers to leverage each other to contribute to the nation's economic growth sustainability, Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak said. The prime minister said Islamic countries had made remarkable progress and became a significant group in the global economy as the total gross domestic products of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries had grown to US$9.4 trillion in 2012 from US$7.5 trillion. Moreover, he said as an Islamic finance pioneer, Malaysia could and must play an influential role in ensuring the sector's future development. The government aimed to increase the SME macroeconomic contribution to 41% of the GDP, 62% of employment and 25% of exports by 2020, he added.

Malaysia is adjusting its tax structure to favour issues of some types of Islamic bond. The move could attract more foreign issuers and investors to its market. The Malaysian sukuk market is already the world’s largest, accounting for two-thirds of total global issuance of about $100 billion so far this year. But the market consists largely of local-currency deals which tend to rely on government-linked institutions as ready buyers.
The effect of the tax changes may be to shift some issuance away from murabaha and encourage the use of ijara and wakala, making the Malaysian market more closely resemble the Gulf.

The proposed merger between CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, RHB Capital Bhd (RHBCap) and Malaysia Building Society Bhd (MBSB) would be credit negative for CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Moody’s vice-president Eugene Tarzimanov noted that the merger would see CIMB Islamic Bank’s asset size triple as a result of acquiring RHB Bank’s and MBSB’s Islamic operations.

Sukuk issuance and investing is expanding outside of the Islamic world. The asset holders range from sovereign wealth funds and high-net-worth-individuals in the Arab Gulf, to retail investors in other Muslim majority countries such as Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia. According to Moody’s Investors Service, Malaysia at present dominates the sukuk market when it comes to both sovereign and corporate issuance. Other major issuers include the governments of Indonesia and Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The overall outstanding amount of sukuk will probably reach around $115 billion this year.

Dentons has advised Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (Malaysia) on an Islamic commodity murabahah facility of US$100 million to the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector. Qasim Aslam, Partner and the Head of Islamic Finance - Middle East, commented: "This marks another example of the significant efforts leading Japanese financial institutions are making to work together in making Islamic finance available across borders. We are very proud to have assisted BTMU on this landmark transaction." The Dentons team was led by Qasim Aslam and senior associate Tien Tai based in Dubai

MAYBANK Islamic Bhd hopes the government will introduce tax incentives for corporations, particularly to support the development of waqf and zakat. Potential growth in the two major sectors of Islamic endowments is given and they could benefit from tax breaks. The bank also hopes the government will continue its favourable policy on foreign currency transaction in Islamic banking, such as the International Currency Business Unit (ICBU) initiative which allows local players to conduct Islamic banking in international currencies via a division set up under the Islamic Banking Act 1983.

The Pakistani unit of Bahrain's Al Baraka Banking Group has raised 2 billion rupees ($19.5 million) via the country's first issuance of subordinated sukuk, or Islamic bonds. The seven-year private placement is the first to be issued by an Islamic bank in Pakistan, according to Abdullah Ghaffar, head of investment banking at Al Baraka Bank Pakistan.

Due to the phasing in of Basel III global banking standards around the globe, several Islamic banks have issued subordinated instruments in order to raise capital, including those in Turkey, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Islamic banking industry is hoping that the government will provide incentives to facilitate the development of the investment account (IA) in 2015. Bank Islam Bhd Managing Director Datuk Seri Zukri Samat said the industry would benefit from such incentives. Zukri also suggested that the government educate the people on Islamic finance as well as prosper the IFSA 2013.

BNP Paribas-INCEIF Centre for Islamic Wealth Management (CIWM) organised a conference on "Malaysia, the Future Global Private Banking Hub: Opportunities and Challenges". It showed that current trends towards regional financial integration have presented significant opportunities into the pool of savings of Asia’s expanding middle class, now more than 2.6 million high net worth individuals. These trends show the increasing demand for private banking by HNWIs with taste for more sophisticated consumer finance and wealth management products.

SWIFT, in collaboration with The Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM) and the Malaysian Islamic financial community, say they will launch a new rulebook for the usage of SWIFT MT messages for Islamic finance. The SWIFT Islamic Finance Rulebook will be available to the Message User Group (MUG) by the end of 2014. The rulebook will provide greater clarity around SWIFT MT message usage based on Islamic principles in order to enable straight-through processing (STP), thereby improving efficiency as well as reducing risk and cost. It will provide a platform for exchanging Islamic finance messages and further promote the usage of message standards.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) will issue Islamic bonds in two tranches under its debut multi-currency sukuk wakala programme in Malaysia. BTMU will issue US$25 million (RM81 million) in a US dollar tranche and 2.5 billion yen (RM74 million) in a yen tranche on Thursday, a statement said. Both sukuk issues will have maturities of one year; the statement did not give other details such as pricing. Malaysia's CIMB Investment Bank is managing the issues. BTMU, part of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, set up a US$500 million multi-currency sukuk programme through its Malaysian unit in June.

The Islamic banking industry needs to take more meaningful steps to benefit the poor, says Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) Economics and Muamalat Faculty Dean Assoc. Prof. Dr. Amir Shaharuddin. Amir said although microfinance is still new in this country, in Indonesia, Sudan, Bangladesh and Pakistan it has given the poor a chance to take part in the Islamic banking system. He said many wakaf funds and parcels of wakaf land in Malaysia are not effectively managed, and the full potential of wakaf assets has yet to be realised. The situation could improve with with more professional management, he said, citing the substantially higher zakat collection now with better management.

AIG Re-Takaful (L) has brought in additional capacity to spur growth of the Malaysia general takaful industry which is currently constricted by limited capacity. In addition, the fully Shariah-compliant unit of insurance giant American International Group Inc (AIG) is differentiating itself from competitors consisting of retakaful operators backed by global reinsurance companies. AIG Re- Takaful CEO Idzuddin Zakaria said the company has treaty and facultative capacity to take on larger risks and offer more sophisticated products and services. AIG Re-Takaful, in operation since April 2014, has undertaken a few facultative risks which frees takaful companies to undertake more risks and thus growing the general takaful sindustry. AIG Re-Takaful will also explore and expand on opportunities to grow in the Malaysian market.

The RHB Banking Group is keen to participate in more global sukuk issuance after making significant inroads in the market via its units, RHB Islamic Bank Bhd and RHB Investment Bank Bhd (RHBIB), in recent global transactions. Yesterday, RHBIB co-managed the Government of Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China's inaugural US$1 billion sukuk issuance which also marks the world's first US dollar-denominated sukuk originated by a AAA-rated government. RHBIB meanwhile was lead manager cum underwriter to IDB Trust Services Ltd's recent 5-year US$1.5 billion sukuk issuance under its US$10 billion (RM32 billion) sukuk programme guaranteed by the Saudi based Islamic Development Bank.

Two of Malaysia’s 16 Islamic lenders now have female CEOs and three of the 11-member central bank Shariah Advisory Board are women, becoming role models for Prime Minister Najib Razak’s push to raise the female labor participation rate to 55 percent by 2015, from 52.4 percent now. The push, which mirrors similar efforts in Japan and South Korea, aims to widen the pool of available talent and help Malaysia maintain its position as the world’s preeminent center for Islamic finance. Only one Shariah bank in the Middle East has a female CEO. Besides, being open to female talent has allowed Malaysia to access a wider pool of Shariah scholars, an area where there is a shortage of experts.

Turkish participation bank Kuveyt Turk plans to issue sukuk in Malaysia aiming to raise as much as 2 billion ringgit ($625.3 million), its first foray into the Southeast Asian Islamic debt capital market. Kuveyt Turk, 62 percent owned by Kuwait Finance House , will sell the sukuk to qualified investors through its asset-leasing company, KT Kira Sertifikalari Varlik Kiralama. No timeframe was given for the deal. In July, Turkiye Finans became the first Turkish lender to issue ringgit-denominated sukuk in Malaysia when it raised 800 million ringgit ($252.2 million) from a 3 billion ringgit programme it set up in June. Moreover, in June, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ set up a $500 million multi-currency sukuk programme in Malaysia.

Industry players are upbeat about Islamic Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) but say a lot needs to be done to raise awareness and excitement about the investment fund. Generally, however, Malaysia has not been enjoying much success when it comes to ETFs since the first product was listed on the local bourse in 2005. Global ETF experts were in unison in pinpointing limited investor awareness as the culprit for the fund’s lack of success. The Malaysian ETF market stands at RM1.03 billion of assets under management (AUM) as at August 2014, versus the global figure of more than US$3 trillion (RM9.6 trillion) by year-end. On the global stage, ETFs have been growing at a phenomenal rate, estimated at some 20 per cent of compounded annual growth rate since its debut in 1989.

The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, has graciously consented to be the Royal Patron for Malaysia’s Islamic Finance Initiative. On behalf of the Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) executive committee, the central bank said under the patronage of Sultan Nazrin, it was envisaged that Malaysia’s Islamic finance marketplace would continue to further strengthen the goodwill and strong bilateral relationships the country has established with other nations. Sultan Nazrin obtained a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University.