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| Return to the Islamic finance 2014 awards index |
Best international Islamic bank
Best Islamic structured products house
Standard Chartered Saadiq retains its title
as the best of the international houses in Islamic finance. Following HSBC’s decision to step back from much of its Islamic presence, Standard Chartered stands apart as the name with the broadest and most integrated operation worldwide, although Citi continues to be a formidable competitor and HSBC is still strong in the businesses it has remained in.
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| Afaq Khan, CEO at StanChart Saadiq |
Standard Chartered used to be outgunned in the Islamic capital markets, but today it leads syndicated Islamic finance league tables for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and has raised $88 billion of Islamic finance for clients since 2004. It is at or near the top of international sukuk league tables, depending on what dates you specify, and turns up on some of the most interesting and important deals. Examples over the past year have included our most innovative deal of the year, the S$600 million ($471 million) equity-linked exchangeable sukuk for Khazanah; and our sukuk of the year, the $1 billion amortizing sukuk for Emirates. Other striking deals have included an Islamic structured warehouse finance solution for Saudi Arabia’s Al Bahra Cable Company, and a SR1.7 billion ($453 million) perpetual and callable sukuk for Almarai, the first corporate hybrid sukuk from the region.
Aside from the markets, Saadiq has a widely diversified product range. Structured finance, for example, is active in 15 different markets; other country operations have particular strength in wholesale banking or consumer, from cash and trade to mortgages and car loans. Across the board it is a strong risk management house, demonstrated by its Islamic commodity hedging product.
Where others are shrinking, this business is growing, launching Islamic banking in Kenya in 2013.
Also, if you believe, in these supposedly reformed times, that a structured products award ought to go to a bank that excels in risk-management tools rather than in ways of squeezing yield out of a heavily structured conceit, then Saadiq is the best candidate.
It is a leading house in the development of Shariah-compliant products, combining both its extensive geographical range – from the UK to the Gulf states, south and southeast Asia to Kenya and Turkey – and its long-standing product development strength.
As all the best institutions do, Saadiq has involved itself in new initiatives and frameworks at a regulatory level, working with the International Islamic Financial Market and Isda on standardization of product standards. It offers a host of hedging products, including one dedicated to commodity hedging, as well as profit rate and currency swaps, alongside more mainstream FX products. It also offers yield enhancement products, a recent example being a capital-protected product linked to a diversified portfolio index structure.
