AUSTRALIA - FINANCE - Crescent Wealth Partners with top US based Islamic fund manager Saturna Capital

au.ibtimes.com - Crescent Wealth, Australia's first Islamic wealth manager, announced on Thursday that it has entered into an agreement with Saturna Sdn Bhd (a wholly-owned subsidiary of US based Saturna Capital) to act as the portfolio manager to the Crescent International Equity Fund to be launched later this year

Saturna's strong fund performance in the U.S. underscored the potential of what he believes can be achieved in the Australian market, Managing Director of Crescent Wealth, Talal Yassine, said.

"Our collaboration with Saturna Capital deepens our expertise in global Islamic finance and will give Australian investors the confidence to invest in our Crescent International Equity Fund," Mr Yassine said. (source)

ARTICLES - Deconstructing The International Business Cycle: Why Does A U.S. Sneeze Give The Rest Of The World A Cold?

Summary: The 2008 crisis underscored the interconnectedness of the international business cycle, with U.S. shocks leading to the largest global slowdown since the 1930s. We estimate spillover effects across major advanced country regions in a structural VAR (SVAR) using pre-crisis data. Our new method freely estimates the contemporaneous correlation matrix for underlying shocks in the VAR and (uniquely, to our knowledge) the associated uncertainty. Our results suggest that the international business cycle is largely driven by U.S. financial shocks with a significant impact from global shocks, mainly reflecting commodity prices. Other advanced economic regions play a much smaller and regional role in growth spillovers. Our findings are consistent with the emerging evidence on the current crisis.