International fund management companies will be given flexibility to own up to 100% equity stake in order to encourage foreign fund managers to invest in and help in the development of the Islamic capital market in Malaysia, said Securities Commission (SC) chairman Datuk Zarinah Anwar.

As of now, we have granted Islamic fund management licences to three companies, Kuwait Finance House (KHF), DBS Bank Ltd of Singapore and CIMB Principal, which have since started their operations.

We have received a lot of inquiries from foreign fund managers including those from the US, Europe and the Middle East and they have shown a lot of interests in setting up operations here, Zarinah told reporters after delivering her keynote address at the Malaysia Islamic Finance Forum here yesterday.

She added that the approval process would be expedited and an aggressive marketing effort was underway to promote the many advantages that the Malaysian capital market had to offer to the international investors.

In her keynote address, Zarinah highlighted the fact that 85% of the listed securities on Bursa Malaysia, representing 65.6% of the total capital market capitalisation were syariah-compliant.

This implies that Malaysia has an attractive Islamic equity value proposition, reaffirms the fact that more companies going for IPO are voluntarily seeking to have syariah-compliant status, said Zarinah.

She added that even in the current challenging market condition, the first six months of the year saw the approval of 22 sukuk issues totaling MYR17.7 billion, or 31% of the total bonds approved during the period.

- The Edge Daily omar 1.1 iimm