Research Monitor Weekly Newsletter - 25-Jul-12

Sukuk’s Best Year Ever

Featured teaser: With sukuk outperforming conventional bonds in the Gulf, the Islamic bonds market will set new records in 2012, writes Zawya’s Celine Salloum. Story page head: The whole world is turning to Islamic bonds By Celine Salloum of Zawya With investor demand for Islamic bonds growing, the growth in Islamic ﬁnance as an emerging global ﬁnancial industry can be attributed to a multitude of factors. These include a growing global Muslim population, rising oil wealth and the emergence of multiple new issuers combined with the increase in the global acceptability, competitiveness and availability of Islamic investment products. Access to a larger investor universe is seen as a key advantage of structuring Islamic products. With sukuk continuing to outperform conventional bonds in the Gulf region in Q2 2012, the Islamic bonds market is set to create new records in 2012. “Today, countries all over the world are turning to Islamic capital markets for ...

Conformity

A Japanese proverb says, “The nail that sticks out will be hammered down.” Society tries to place many rules on us as individuals as to what is acceptable and what is not. We must decide for ourselves whether to conform to such a social decorum. We are taught as soon as we are old enough to grasp the idea that it is bad to be unique and to avoid being different. At some point, however, we must decide within ourselves whether to spend every day trying to be like everyone else because society says we should or living each day true to ourselves. Our strength as a person is proven through what we decide. E. E. Cummings once said, "To be nobody but yourself-in a world which is doing it's best night and day to make you like everyone else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." The benefits of being true to ourselves greatly outweigh any negative aspects of choosing that path. One of the most obvious advantages of bein...

Green Finance: A Net Positive Transition

We are all familiar with “Green Economy” where jobs are now created towards a greener vision, aiming at reducing carbon emissions and limiting global temperature rise. But what about “Green Financing”? Putting it into words, green financing is a loan or investment that supports environmentally-friendly activities such as improving energy efficiency of your home or switching to electric vehicles or even building a sustainable infrastructure. And as we begin to recover from the pandemic, green finance presents a huge opportunity to build back a greener future while fighting against climate change. Climate change and environmental degradation are sources of risks for the wellbeing of our societies and the prosperity of our economies. Green finance is now in the mainstream and is becoming the new norm, as risks associated with environmentally-damaged products and services increase and people are investing in green alternatives. Such investors are financial actors looking for investment opp...

Celine Salloum

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