Hong Kong aims to become Islamic finance hub Agence France Presse HONG KONG - Hong Kong's chief executive said Wednesday the city would look to emulate Malaysia and Singapore as a center for Islamic finance, in an effort to grab a slice of the thriving market. In his annual policy address, Donald Tsang said providing financial products that comply with Islamic law "offers huge potential for development." "To further consolidate Hong Kong's position as a global financial center, we should actively leverage on this new trend by developing an Islamic financial platform in Hong Kong," Tsang told legislators. "Apart from stepping up our efforts to promote Hong Kong's financial services to major Islamic countries and regions, we will focus on developing an Islamic bond market." Tsang said the city's Monetary Authority was now working with the financial sector to develop products that complied with Islamic finance's strict rules, where interest payments and profits earned from alcohol, pornography, pork or gambling are all banned. Since Muslim-dominated Malaysia's first issuance of sovereign global Islamic bonds in 2002, there has been a series of other issuances by countries such as a United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Pakistan. Malaysia retains the world's largest Islamic bond market, accounting for about 47 billion US dollars or two-thirds of total Islamic bonds outstanding worldwide. Singapore has also pushed to establish itself as an Islamic banking center. Hong Kong could also face competition from former colonial power Britain, where Lloyds TSB became the country's first high-street bank to provide services compatible with Islamic Sharia law, following the establishment of the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB). <http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=95345> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
