JPMorgan is making a big push in the Middle East, and particularly in Islamic finance, after announcing last month that it had hired some of the biggest names in investment banking in the region.

Euromoney looks at the extent to which green finance will change the fabric of the global capital markets in the years to come, speaking to the thought-leaders at the world’s largest banks about their strategies to assist in – and benefit from – the challenge of climate change.

Bank of London and the Middle East (BMLE) has advanced its bid to provide a bridge between southeast Asian and Middle Eastern Islamic finance. The bank, which became London’s second independent wholesale Islamic bank when it opened at the beginning of July, announced at the beginning of August that it had appointed a head of structured finance, Derek Weist. Weist comes to BMLE from ABC International Bank, where he was European head of Islamic banking and head of Islamic asset management. BMLE’s CEO, Humphrey Percy, says he hopes to expand their team from 35 to around 65 people over the next two years.

The spate of new privately owned banks will soon be joined by specialist Islamic banks, which by all accounts can look forward to a flying start in the pristine Syrian market.

The CEO of a London-based product design and consultancy firm has told Euromoney his team has developed a Shariah-compliant futures contract which he says will "revolutionize" Islamic finance. Humayon Dar of BMB Islamic, a specialist Islamic finance company, hopes work on the contract, which he says has already been approved by Shariah scholars, will be finished by the end of the year. He says it should be ready to go on the market during the first quarter of 2008.

The governor of Sama has led the Saudi economy through a turbulent but ultimately prosperous period during an unprecedented term of almost 25 years.

Is central Asia of the verge of an Islamic banking boom?

Exotix pushes beyond the wild frontier

The insurance sector in Syria is emerging from almost half a century of state monopoly and is still in a nascent state that offers both attractions and risks to the first new wave of private firms.

After an absence of almost half a century, private-sector banks are once again doing business in Syria. Some three years after the first pioneers opened their doors, the country’s economic landscape is still in full transformation – and competition is beginning to heat up. Alex Warren reports.

Tamweel controls one-third of Dubai’s burgeoning mortgage market. In the wake of the company’s issuance of the Gulf’s first ever internationally rated securitization, Dominic O’Neill talks to the company’s CFO and CEO.

National Bank of Kuwait is a leading force in raising capital using Shariah-compliant instruments for property development in its domestic market and in the region. Nigel Dudley reports.

JPMorgan has hired Bill Schwab as a managing director and head of the structuring team in its real estate structured finance business. He joins JPMorgan from Deutsche Bank, where he was a founding member of the real estate finance team and head of the European real estate capital structure and underwriting. Before that, Schwab was real estate chief lending officer at Goldman Sachs. Based in London, Schwab reports to Jon Rickert, head of real estate structured finance for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Two MBS transactions have become the Gulf region’s first internationally rated securitizations.

Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence

With the exception of extremely volatile regional stock markets that have hit the profits of some banks and their customers, the dynamic economies of the Middle East have created a benevolent environment for the region’s banks. High oil prices have enabled governments, particularly in the Gulf, to reduce debt, pay private sector contractors more promptly, deliver annual surpluses and invest in infrastructure.

Awards of Excellence

Awards of Excellence

The US bank has been present from the ground floor up in emerging market takeovers of developed market companies and cross-border emerging market deals.

Awards of Excellence

Al Rajhi was the pioneer of Shariah-compliant financial services in the mid-20th century, and Al Rajhi Bank has built on those principles ever since.

S&P this June launched the new S&P Pan Asia Shariah Index, a new addition to its Global Shariah Index Series.

Standard & Poor’s has launched the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, aiming to give it a bigger share of the fast-growing Islamic finance market. The new index is designed to cover the largest and most liquid stocks in Brazil, Russia, India and China that meet Shariah law investment criteria and that trade on developed market exchanges – the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Standard & Poor’s already offers Shariah-compliant versions of its most widely used global indices – the S&P 500, the S&P Europe 350 and the S&P Japan 500, as well as the S&P GCC Middle East Shariah Index Series. "The S&P BRIC Shariah Index feeds into the already powerful line-up of Islamic indices launched over the past six months by Standard & Poor’s," says Alka Banerjee, vice-president of Standard & Poor’s Index Services. "Each of the constituents within the S&P BRIC Shariah Index is liquid and completely hedgeable. As a result, we are already seeing clients create mutual funds and structured products based upon the index." To be eligible for inclusion in the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, companies must first be constituents of the S&P/IFCI Index for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Constituents are then screened for Shariah compliance based on proprietary sector and financial ratios. Only those stocks deemed Shariah-compliant are retained for the final universe of the index. All S&P Shariah indices are screened by Ratings Intelligence Partners, a Kuwait consulting company.

The UK’s Prudential and Bank Aljazira, Saudi Arabia’s smallest bank, have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote takaful or Islamic insurance in the kingdom.

Turkey’s latest political crisis was triggered on April 24 by prime minister Recep Erdogan’s nomination of foreign minister Abdullah Gul as the ruling AK party’s candidate for president. Many had hoped that he would opt for a candidate from outside the party in order to assuage the fears of the fiercely secularist sections of the population, who demonstrated with an almost million-strong march on April 29 that they are genuinely afraid that Turkey might become an Islamic state.

In Euromoney’s February 2007 Islamic finance awards section, we incorrectly stated that the PCFC or Dubai Ports $3.5 billion pre-IPO convertible "was structured by Deutsche Bank". The transaction, Best Islamic finance deal of the year, was structured, arranged, underwritten and distributed by Barclays Capital and Dubai Islamic Bank only, while Deutsche Bank was advising PCFC on the acquisition of P&O. We regret any inconvenience that may have been caused.

Housing provision for a burgeoning youthful population puts the development of a mortgage market centre stage in the GCC countries.

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