Baljeet Kaur Grewal, managing director and vice chairman of Kuwait Finance House does not think the UK is ready for Islamic finance at the retail level. Grewal, speaking at a seminar in London, was explaining why KFH had not opened offices in the UK. She explained that although KFH had executed a number of real estate transactions for private clients on it books, it had not started wholesale or retail operations in the UK. She said: “We’re a commercial profit-making organization, and we’ll go where we can make the most profit, or where the best opportunities lie.” She confirmed that KFH were opening up an office in Moscow, were talking to the French regulator about the development of Shari’ah compliant finance in France and had representation in Australia. (full story)
David Testa, MD of David Testa Consultancy Ltd. and former CEO of UK-based Gatehouse Bank agreed with Grewal’s sentiments. He said: “The UK needs to get its act together. In the banking sector Islamic Bank of Britain has not worked out, for whatever reason and the momentum has gone elsewhere.” He thought that the UK government’s U-turn on issuing a sovereign Sukuk was just one more nail in the coffin, but that this move was no surprise. “When I was CEO of Gatehouse, I was part of an industry lobbying group that met the Treasury [under the former administration]. I remember walking out of that meeting certain that we’d never see a sovereign Sukuk in the UK, and three years down the road I am still waiting to be proved wrong.”
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