Winner: Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank continued to take crucial steps in the Islamic structured products market last year. The German bank issued and distributed more than $200 million in new instruments. Products were customized in all asset classes and were distributed across the GCC and Malaysia, with the UAE becoming the biggest clientele market. In January 2009, Deutsche Bank launched Al Mi’yar, a Luxembourg-domiciled platform to help facilitate the issuance of Shariah-compliant securities. The platform has standardized internal and external processes so other banks can access it and white label products. It is also very versatile, covering all types of Islamic paper from money markets certificates through to sukuks.
Last year, Deutsche Bank launched new commodity-linked products, most notably commodity-linked rate accrual certificates and notes linked to baskets of agricultural indices – trades done for one of the biggest Islamic banks.
The bank also closed several new hedge fund-linked products, such as db Islamic Liquid Select. This product offers a low correlation with other asset classes.
Deutsche recently launched its Liquid Alpha strategy – a mechanism that has near-zero net market exposure and extracts absolute returns such that alpha is independent from the asset classes underlying the strategy. This feature not only makes it stand out from other Shariah-compliant products, but it is also gaining a lot of interest from Islamic clients.
