Mushtak Parker | Arab News
Published: 25 January 2010

Raja Teh Maimunah is the brave new face of the Malaysian Islamic capital market. As the global head of Islamic capital markets at Bursa Malaysia Berhad, the national stock exchange, she is responsible for putting the bourse on the global map in the field of inter alia Islamic equities and investment funds, sukuk and liquidity management based on commodity Murabaha trading (Tawarruq) Read More...  

Maxim Osintsev is a Russian banker with a difference. He is a fluent Arabic speaker and has a passion for Islamic finance, which he says comes from the heart. As managing director, Oil & Gas Department at Sberbank, the largest commercial bank in Russia, he is on a mission to convince his colleagues and senior management that purely as a business proposition Islamic banking makes sense because there is a ready made potential market of 20 million Muslims in the federation. Sberbank (the National Savings Bank of Russia) is 60 percent owned by the Russian government through the Central Bank of Russia and 40 percent by the private sector including 24 percent by foreign investors and its shares are publicly listed and traded on various stock exchanges including the London Stock Exchange. Not surprisingly, the chairman of Sberbank's supervisory committee is Sergey Ignatiev, who is also the chairman of the Central Bank of Russia. Sberbank has a 50 percent share of retail deposits and 31 percent share of the total Russian loan market. Its total assets at end January 2010 were 6.99 trillion rubles. At the same time Sberbank is also expanding overseas and is set to enter the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) market, which is another reason why it should also have Islamic financial products in its portfolio. Here Osintsev discusses with Arab News why Islamic finance has big potential in Russia and the CIS countries, and outlines a potential roadmap for the future implementation of Islamic finance in the country. Read More...

Dr. Hassan served as a Professor of Shariah in the Faculty of Law and Economics at Cairo University between 1960 and 2002. Currently, he chairs numerous Shariah supervisory committees. Dr Hassan has authored twenty-one books on Islamic law, finance, economics, social studies and art, in addition to more than 400 research articles on these subjects Read More...  

Dr Alfawzan is one of the most renowned Sharia scholars in Saudi Arabia. With an extensive academic training in the field of Islamic Jurisprudence at some of the most esteemed academic institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he holds a strong command on Sharia matters related to finance. Dr Alfawzan has also served in various academic capacities. He has in past served as Head of Islamic Studies Department at the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America and Assistant Professor / Head of Comparative Jurisprudence at The Institute of Higher Jurisprudence of Al-Imam Mohammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). He has also authored numerous articles and research papers and is frequently invited by national TV and Radio programmes. He also supervises a large number of doctoral theses. Read More...