BANKING - Turkish banks eye their customers' $270b pot of gold

www.gulfnews.com - Istanbul: Turkish banks are seeking to boost the lowest savings rate among major emerging markets and allay a concern of credit rating companies by persuading customers to deposit gold.

Turks have about 5,000 tonnes of gold "stashed under their pillows", Ozcan Halac, the head of the Istanbul Gold Exchange, said in a Bloomberg interview on March 7. That's equivalent to $270 billion (Dh991.7 billion), or more than a third of Turkey's $772 billion economy.

 Akbank TAS, the lender part-owned by Citigroup Inc, said on April 5 it was offering a new gold deposit account to spur savings. (source)

WORLD - CAPITAL MARKETS - Sharia investing leans to West

gulfnews.com - Islamic benchmarks have consistently outperformed conventional ones

To some observers of Islamic equity investing, Islamic or Sharia-compliant equity indexes seem to imply investing in publicly-listed companies in Muslim countries.

The end results contradict the assumptions. This also rebuts allegations by many from the anti-Sharia movement that Islamic investing is about investing in companies linked to terrorism or financing terrorism. The largest companies in the S&P Global BMI Sharia include ExxonMobil, IBM, Chevron, Nestle and Microsoft.

Today, there is a large stock count and market capitalisation weighting bias towards the non-Muslim G20 countries in all global Islamic equity indexes. We will look at country exposure of Sharia-compliant companies, the economic sector exposure and selected Muslim country Islamic indexes, and how to increase number of Sharia-compliant companies. (source)

INTERVIEW - Hussain Erkan - Turkey strives to build closer links with GCC stock exchanges

Turkey has been building capital market bridges to GCC and South East Asia, and chairman of the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Hussain Erkan, has been a leading architect in establishing dialogue, hosting events, and facilitating cooperation and coordination with his counterparts for both Islamic and conventional finance. In this interview, Erkan shares his thoughts on the challenges and progress of Islamic finance in Turkey, among various other issues. He is hopeful that the improvements made should be able to attract investors from the GCC. 

 

Gulf News: Would you kindly explain the role of Istanbul Stock Exchange in providing opportunities for those interested in Islamic finance?

Hussain Erkan: Islamic countries have a huge potential to create wealth in the economy with their rich resources and are capable of achieving more by improving their capital market structure. Since 2005, under the activities of Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (COMCEC), Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) has been working on creating this awareness and developing the exchange industry in Islamic countries by acting as the coordinator of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states’ Stock Exchanges Forum. We also cooperate with other international institutions such as IIFM (International Islamic Financial Market)? on developing an appropriate structure to create solutions for increasing the liquidity of Islamic capital market instruments. (source)