INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesia sells 540 bln rph sukuk in auction

www.reuters.com - Indonesia sold 540 billion rupiah ($57.05 million) of sukuk in an auction on Tuesday, above a target of 500 billion rupiah, with yields rising slightly from the previous auction, the finance ministry said.
The country raised 500 billion rupiah from sales of 25-year project-based sukuk and 40 billion rupiah from six-year sukuk. There were no winning bids for six-month sharia T-bill and 10 and 15-year project based sukuk.
The weighted average yield on the 25-year sukuk was 6.71616 percent, versus 6.69002 percent in an auction last month. (source)

MALAYSIA - FINANCE - Malaysia's pension reform may boost Islamic funds

www.reuters.com - SYDNEY, July 23 (Reuters) - Malaysians will have more room to allocate part of their retirement contributions to Islamic investments under sweeping government reforms to the pension system.
At present, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) receives public pension contributions and invests the money. Some of that investment is in sharia-compliant areas such as sukuk and halal stocks, but contributors have limited scope to ensure the money is being used that way. A maximum 20 percent of savings can be placed through the EPF into a single mutual fund.  (full story)

INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesia raises 460 bln rph in sukuk auction

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Indonesia raised 460 billion rupiah ($48.65 million) from a sukuk auction on Tuesday, lower than a target of 500 billion rupiah, the debt office said.
The country only sold 25-year project-based sukuk at a weighted average yield of 6.69 percent. There were no winning bids for one-year sharia T-bills and six-year, 10-year as well as 15-year project-based sukuk.  (full story)

INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesian aims to raise 500 bln rph in July 24 sukuk auction

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Indonesia aims to raise 500 billion rupiah ($52.91 million) in a sukuk auction on July 24, the debt office said in a statement on Tuesday.
The finance ministry plans to offer 6-month sharia T-bills and long terms project-based sukuk with maturities of 6-, 10-, 15- and 25-years. (source)

INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesia aims to raise 500 bln rph in sukuk auction

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Indonesia aims to raise 500 billion rupiah ($53.30 million) in a sukuk auction on July 10 from the sales of sharia T-bills and project-based sukuk, the finance ministry said on Tuesday. (source)

AUSTRALIA - FUNDS - Crescent Wealth to launch Australia's 1st Islamic pension fund

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Australian fund manager Crescent Wealth plans to launch the country's first Islamic pension fund by December and allocate between 15 to 30 percent of it in property, its managing director said.
Talal Yassine said Crescent Wealth hopes to build the fund to between A$4 billion ($4.03 billion) and A$6 billion in five years.
Crescent Wealth, which was established last year, currently has less than A$5 million under management and advice but Yassine expects strong growth for his fund due to a lack of available Shariah-compliant financial products in Australia.  (source)

WORLD - RATNGS - Fitch affirms Islamic Development Bank

www.reuters.com - Fitch Ratings has affirmed the Islamic Development Bank's (IsDB) Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'AAA' with a Stable Outlook and Short-term IDR at 'F1+'. IsDB's ratings are underpinned by strong intrinsic features, primarily by excellent capitalisation. IsDB is one of the most highly capitalised multilateral development banks (MDBs) covered by Fitch. The ratio of equity to assets has remained above 60% since inception (64.1% at end-1432H, equivalent to 25 November 2011 in the Gregorian calendar), mainly thanks to regular capital inflows from shareholders and steady yet moderate profits. The ratio of debt to equity is low, at 49.2% at end-1432H. The bank also maintains a comfortable level of liquid assets, which more than fully covered its short-term liabilities at end-1432H. Credit risk is moderate. The IsDB mainly extends project financing guaranteed by member states or state-owned banks to finance infrastructure or social services. (source)

MALAYSIA - FINANCE - Malaysia revises Islamic equity standards

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Malaysia's securities commission is revising its guidelines for equities which qualify for Islamic investment, in a move that could increase the appeal of the country's sharia-compliant funds industry to Gulf investors.
Under the previous standards, investment was banned or restricted in companies that were involved in industries deemed to be unethical, such as gambling, alcohol and tobacco.
These restrictions are now being made more stringent, so that a lower level of exposure to those industries is unacceptable for Islamic investment, according to a statement by the securities commission on Monday.
The revised guidelines also include two new financial standards which filter out excessively cash-rich and debt-ridden companies, in order to limit exposure to interest payments and pure monetary speculation, which are unacceptable in Islam. (source)

INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesia raises 800bn rupiah sukuk, yield falls

www.brecorder.com - JAKARTA: Indonesia's government raised 800 billion rupiah ($85.06 million) of project-based sukuk in an auction on Wednesday, slightly below its target, the finance ministry said.The six-year project-based sukuk was at a yield of 5.92188 percent, down from 6.14266 percent in an auction last month, belying a recent trend of rising yields in government debt auctions amid global investor nerves over risky assets.  (source)

MALAYSIA - FINANCE - Malaysia c.bank to expand new Islamic facility

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Malaysia's central bank will eventually expand its new Islamic money market funding facility to allow trades of the instrument between commercial banks, while introducing longer tenors, the central bank said on Thursday. The central bank announced last week that it was launching a collateralised murabaha facility through which Islamic banks could obtain funds from the central bank by pledging high investment grade sukuk as collateral. The new facility aims to aid Islamic banks' liquidity management.
The central bank told Reuters in an email on Thursday that use of the collateralised murabaha instrument would later be expanded so that banks could trade it between themselves in the interbank market. It did not give a time frame.  (source)

INDONESIA - EDUCATON - As Salaam drill SRB Rp 20 Billion for Education Funding

WWW.REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - Sharia Rural Bank (SRB) As Salaam Islamic financing product relaunch of education. This product is offered to people who want their children to continue their studies to the next level.

Early funding is intended for customers who have financial limitations in school and college finance their children. Offered ceiling of Rp 150 million.

"We give the ceiling in accordance with the cost of education in Indonesia," said Director of SRB As Salaam, Cahyo Kartiko, told Reuters on Thursday (31/5). Maximum ceiling is viewed by the highest cost of schools in Indonesia. (source)

AUSTRALIA - FINANCE - Australia's NSW revives Islamic finance push

www.reuters.com - May 13 (Reuters) - The government of the Australian state of New South Wales, home to the country's financial capital Sydney, will send a group to Dubai this week to discuss ways to develop the Islamic finance industry, officials said.
The delegation, led by New South Wales premier Barry O'Farrell and including financial services professionals, will explore regulatory and legal issues at a roundtable discussion with the Dubai Export Development Corp on Tuesday.  (source)

WORLD - FINANCE - Islamic repo agreements struggle for traction

www.reuters.com - May 10 (Reuters) - Islamic repurchase agreements may struggle to gain wide acceptance as a tool for financial institutions because the industry lacks clear rules governing their use, participants at a major industry conference told Reuters.
Liquidity management products such as Islamic repos were one of the main themes at the annual meeting of the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) in Manama this week.  (source)

INDONESIA - BANKING - Bahrain's Al Baraka posts 7% Q1 profit rise (plans for Indonesia)

www.arabianbusiness.com - Bahrain-based Islamic lender Al Baraka Banking Group posted a 7 percent increase in first-quarter net income, the bank said in a statement on Wednesday.
The bank, which has operations in 15 countries including Turkey, Syria and Egypt, made a profit of US$57.4m for the first-quarter, compared with US$53.5m in the first three months of 2011.
The increase in profit came despite continuing political and economic upheaval in a number of the markets in which the group operated, as well as the impact of debt issues in the euro zone, Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel, chairman of Al Baraka, said. (source)

INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesia raises 755 bln rph from sharia T-bill auction

www.reuters.com - May 9 (Reuters) - Indonesia's finance ministry sold 755 billion rupiah ($82.11 million) from an additional sukuk auction on Wednesday, said the debt office which gave no target for the auction.
The ministry sold the six-month sharia T-bill with a weighted average yield at 3.82887 percent and a 1.26 bid-to-cover ratio. (source)

INDONESIA - CAPITAL MARKETS - Indonesia sells 1.015 trln rph sukuk in auction, yields flat

www.reuters.com - JAKARTA, May 8 (Reuters) - Indonesia sold 1.015 trillion rupiah ($110.39
million) of sharia government bonds in an auction on Tuesday with six-month
sharia T-bills attracting the most incoming bids, according to the debt office. 
    Yields of 10-year and 15-year project-based sukuk were flat relative to
previous auctions. 
    Following are results of the auction. Bids are in billions of rupiah, yields
are in percent. (full story)

WORLD - REGULATIONS - AAOIFI plans reform of takaful standards

www.insuranceinsight.eu -  Khaled Al Fakih, the new secretary-general of the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions, outlined plans for a sweeping review of its guidelines in an interview with Reuters.

"We would like to see insightful debate ... that can help us develop standards that can benefit the industry," Fakih told Reuters, ahead of AAOIFI's annual meeting on 7 and 8 May.
His organisation plans to start consultations on reforming the operations of sharia boards, the groups of Islamic scholars which rule on whether financial institutions' activities and products are religiously acceptable, by the middle of this year. (source)

INDONESIA - RATNGS - Fitch rates Indosat BBB and the upcoming Indosat Sukuk Ijara AAA (Ind)

www.reuters.com - (The following was released by the rating agency) JAKARTA/SINGAPORE/SYDNEY, April 30 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings has upgraded Indonesia-based P.T. Indosat Tbk's (Indosat) Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) to 'BBB' from 'BBB-'. The Outlook is Stable.
Its foreign currency senior unsecured rating has also been upgraded to 'BBB' from 'BBB-'. At the same time, the agency has assigned Indosat a National Long-Term Rating of 'AAA(idn)' and 'AAA(idn)' ratings to its proposed bond and sukuk ijarah with maximum issuance of IDR2.5trn and IDR500bn respectively.  (source)

WORLD - REGULATONS - AAOIFI in wide review of Islamic finance standards

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Islamic finance may face its biggest shake-up in years as a top standard-setting body seeks to reform the way the industry does business, including the role of highly paid scholars in enforcing religious principles.
Khaled Al Fakih, the new secretary-general of the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), outlined plans for a sweeping review of its guidelines in an interview with Reuters.
Some of AAOIFI's reforms may prove controversial by challenging entrenched interests in the fast-growing business. Islamic financial assets hit $1.3 trillion globally last year, a 150 percent rise in the past five years as the industry expanded beyond core markets in the Middle East and Malaysia, financial lobby group TheCityUK estimates.  (source)

INDONESIA - BANKING - Maybank says to delay stake sale in Indonesia's BII

www.reuters.com - (Reuters) - Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank) will delay the sale of a 10.7 percent stake in PT Bank Internasional Indonesia because of weak investor interest, the companies said on Thursday.
Maybank, Malaysia's biggest lender by assets, said in January it had appointed UBS to handle the sale of the stake in BII. It is required by the Indonesian capital market regulator to reduce its stake to 80 percent from 97 percent currently. (source)