The Financial Conduct Authority took the world by surprise last week, announcing that it will phase out the LIBOR, known as “the world’s most important number”. Underpinning trillions of financial instruments, including Sukuk, the erasure of this scandal-riddled benchmark rate could mean monumental changes. This week’s cover story explores the potential impact from this impending change and how the industry will cope.
In this issue, we also take a look at changes in a Tunisian Islamic bank as a management change is in order as well as address a recent media brouhaha involving banks in Malaysia using hard data instead of empirical observations. We canvass the mergers and acquisitions landscape as well as the Jordanian market – one which has shown phenomenal progress over the last 12 months.
We also have market experts writing to us on a plethora of topics: fintech in Singapore, the relationship between the UK and Islamic finance, the corporate Sukuk landscape including the one in Indonesia, the liquidity issue faced by Islamic banks in Oman and a country feature on Japan.
As usual, we wish our readers an informative and insightful read.