Despite facing fierce competition from such rivals as BNP Paribas, Citigroup, HSBC and UBS, Deutsche Bank emerged victorious in the race to secure the award for best structured product house in the Islamic finance market. Thanks to the extensive conceptual groundwork the German bank laid in 2005, in 2006 it was able to take full advantage of the explosive growth in the structured products segment of the Islamic finance market and offer a wide range of instruments spanning different asset classes and regions.
Among the offerings pioneered by Deutsche Bank in 2006 is the commodity linked individually capped coupon note (Clip), a dollar-denominated three-year issue that pays an annual coupon that is linked to the performance of a basket of five popular commodities – aluminium, copper, gold, oil and zinc. Other innovations include Shariah-compliant money market solutions in a range of currencies, durations and jurisdictions, and the first ever credit derivatives option. Deutsche Bank has also developed a range of Shariah-compliant hedging alternatives for interest rate and currency risk, which have received approval from the Islamic Development Bank and helped them to become widely accepted benchmarks for the whole Islamic finance market.