I WAS in Kuala Lumpur in October attending the Global Islamic Finance Forum, organised by Bank Negara and the Malaysian International Islamic Finance Centre. The whole glitterati of the Islamic world was here, and coincidentally, the HSBC Asia Board also held its meeting, so it was also good time to catch up with all the Hong Kong good and great, including the incoming taipans at the bank.
In the 1990s, Islamic finance was a fledgling fringe industry. But today, its size has grown from roughly US$150bil to about US$1 trillion in size. This is, of course, still small relative to some of the largest global fund managers and universal banks, who manage more than US$1 trillion each. But the double-digit growth and potential size of the market cannot be ignored. Some pundits think that the market size will reach US$2 trillion within the next five years.
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