Islamic index being planned
DATE: 16/6/1998, PUBLICATION: BAHRAIN TRIBUNE, DESCRIPTION: English Daily, Broadsheet, Bahrain CIRCULATION: 10,000
A universally accepted Islamic equity benchmark index is to be established in a major development for the Islamic (equity) investment market, according to a senior investment banker on Wall Street. “There are at least 35 Islamic equity funds as well as numerous Islamic asset management and private banking portfolios,” said A. Rushdie Siddique, Vice-President of Klein Maus and Shire, a division of United States Financial Group. “However, they measure performance by an in-house derived version of the S&P 500, FT 100, Russell 1000/2000, or MSCI World Index. The lack of an Islamic benchmark index prevents universal performance comparison and does not allow the development of Islamic index funds.” KMS will shortly introduce the Socially Aware Muslim Investment (SAMI 500) with a large and established US financial institution that has world class research capabilities. It will be comprised the 500 most liquid market value weighted securities and is representative of industries from the world stock exchanges. “After examining portfolios of Islamic funds, we recognized an index was needed that would complete the work of RHB Islamic Index, the national Islamic index of Malaysia,” said Muhammad Ali Khan, Chairman of USFG.
