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The sukuk market has bucked the general trend of lack of supply in Islamic finance.

Tier 1 perpetual CMS-linked products, once in high demand from private investors, have shown their dark side. Some deals have lost 20% of their value. Their highly illiquid nature means investors could be left high and dry. How did these inappropriate products come to be sold to an unsuitable investor base? Alex Chambers and Helen Avery report.

Leading international management consultancies have traditionally topped this category, with past winners including Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. This year, although KPMG was an impressive challenger, Euromoney recognizes the work of local specialist Dar Al Istithmar.

Everyone seems to be making the decision to seek alpha in foreign exchange, but what does that entail? Leading figures in the FX market debate how to combine systematic and discretionary risk allocation, the importance of choosing the right managers, understanding volatility and whether or not the sell side has helped the transition to alpha.

Malaysian retail bank Southern Bank had its expansion plans scuppered in December by Bank Negara Malaysia, the country’s central bank, after BNM refused to approve Southern Bank’s proposed acquisition of Asia General Holdings, a Singapore general insurance company.

Although Takaful Malaysia remains a major player in the field of shariah-compliant insurance, offering some 117 types of general takaful schemes, it is primarily focused on southeast Asia. In contrast, the winner of this year’s award, HSBC Amanah, has a global reach. It now offers general takaful products to both its retail and corporate clients in Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the UK, via a combination of its own manufacturing capability and white labelling. The general takaful offering was only initiated in late 2004, however, meaning that volumes are still small.

Bahrain-based Noriba snatched this year’s award, narrowly beating the 2005 winner, Gulf Financial House. Noriba, which was incorporated in 2002, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Switzerland’s UBS Group. According to CEO Toufic Kanafani, the bank’s investor base is international, with clients from the Gulf region, the wider Middle East, the US, Europe and South East Asia.

This year’s winner is Denton Wilde Sapte, while 2005’s winner, Norton Rose, came a close second. Denton Wilde Sapte has dedicated Islamic finance teams in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and London, and its client list includes ABC Islamic, ABN Amro, ADIB, Amlak Finance, BarCap, DIB, DB, GIB, HSBC Amanah, KFH, Standard Chartered, Standard Bank, WestLB and Shamil Bank.

Stephan Theissing is the treasurer of Allianz as well as its head of corporate finance. He’s the man that investment bankers, looking for a share of the global financial group’s substantial capital markets activity, need to impress. Peter Koh finds out what they have to do to win his favour.

Cash management: A new model for Europe?

The bond market might have underestimated the troubled issuer’s ability to realize investment-grade ambitions.

After losing out to its nemesis UBS in last year’s poll, Credit Suisse has reclaimed its title as best private bank in Switzerland. The bank attributes its success to the completion of a two-year root and branch reform of its core advisory process. “We started with in-house research that simply asked our advisors how they would define the Credit Suisse advisory process,” says Arthur Vayloyan, head of private banking in Switzerland at Credit Suisse. “What we found, which is probably what you would find in a lot of companies, was that when you ask 10 different people you get 10 different answers. This was a strong indication that we had to become much more rigorous about our advisory process. ‘We’ meant all of us, starting at the top; because it’s important for us to set an example and to be able to be a correcting factor, if necessary. Vayloyan: a more rigorous approach“Our advice strategy was a real step forward. At first we had internal resistance. It was such a basic thing that it raised a lot of eyebrows. People were asking: ‘We’ve been doing this very well for 150 years so why do we need to change?’ But the market changes every day so we needed to change too. Now if you ask our bankers: ‘What is the Credit Suisse advisory process?’ you get a much more coherent answer. It is key that our clients are all treated by the same standards but focussing on their individual needs when they first come to the bank."