RUSSIA - TATARISTAN - Tatarstan Islamic finance hub ambitions boosted

LONDON, Sept 14 (IFR) - Russian republic Tatarstan's ambition to develop a Sharia-compliant market received a boost this week when the Kazan-based AK Bars Bank became the first Tatar credit to secure a murabaha loan.

It was also the first international loan facility compliant with Sharia canons for a Russian bank .

Earlier this year Tatarstan announced an Islamic finance initiative to promote the sector, and the Ba1/NR/BBB- rated Muslim-majority republic backed this up with plans to tap the Sharia-compliant market with sukuk paper. (source)

RUSSIA - Changes to Law Needed to Facilitate Sukuk Use

JAKARTA — Russian borrowers are pitching plans to sell the nation's first Islamic bonds even as regulators lag behind in customizing laws for the industry.

Executives from Gazprombank, the lending arm of gas export monopoly Gazprom, are in Southeast Asia to seek support for issuance by as many as five companies, Alexander Kazakov, director of structured and syndicated finance at the bank, said in Jakarta. Tatarstan, a Muslim-majority Russian republic, will announce a dollar-denominated sale soon, according to Kuala Lumpur-based adviser AmanahRaya Investment Bank, which is working on the proposal. (source)

RUSSIA - For Islamic finance, Tartarstan to be Russia's test case

Officials meeting in the shadow of the snowy towers of Kazan's 16th century white Kremlin are in an unlikely site for hatching groundbreaking financial plans. But Kazan in Russia's Tartarstan region aims to be the first place in Russia to launch an Islamic bond, with a planned $100m-200m sukuk issue planned for July this year that will be a test case for the appetite for Islamic financial products in Russia.

Countries ranging from France and the UK, Thailand to Brazil are all exploring how to use Islamic financial investment to draw gulf petrodollars into their economies. The Islamic finance industry has boomed in recent years, growing at a rate of over 14% per annum from around $150bn since the 1990s to a total of $14.1 trillion in 2009, according to Jamelah Jamaluddin, CEO of Kuwait Finance House in Malaysia. The growth is to "serve over a billion people who have previously been underserviced," by the financial industry, she notes. (full story)

RUSSIA - MALAYSIA - Amanah Raya to help set up Islamic bank in Kazakhstan

Malaysian trustee company Amanah Raya Berhad is joining forces with Fattah Finance, a local Kazakh brokerage company, and the state-owned Development Bank of Kazakhstan to conduct a feasibility study to establish the second Islamic bank in the CIS country. The aim is to submit an application for an Islamic-banking license later this year under new legislation introduced by Kazakhstan in 2009 to facilitate the establishment of Islamic banks and the introduction of Islamic financial products in the country. (source)

RUSSIA - Tatarstan set for debut sukuk

Khaled Al-Aboodi CEO of ICD

By MUSHTAK PARKER | ARAB NEWS

Published: Jan 3, 2011 00:42 Updated: Jan 3, 2011 00:55 

Following the visit of President Rustam Minnikhanov of the Russian republic of Tatarstan to Malaysia in December and the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Kuala Lumpur between the Tatarstan government, the local IFC Linova, Malaysia’s Amanah Raya Berhad Group and Kuwait Finance House Malaysia (KFH Malaysia) whereby the parties would cooperate in facilitating the issuance of the debut sovereign sukuk of Tatarstan, work on the feasibility study on the sukuk origination is set to start this month.