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Dubai leading in teaching Islamic finance EMBAs |
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4/19/2007 10:45:08 AM |
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A mock trading room may be a familiar sight to students at some of the world's leading business schools as they work through their MBA programmes.
Few, however, will have come across a Sharia-compliant trading floor, where transactions and operations are made consistent with Islamic tenets.
Such facilities are planned for a new Islamic executive MBA programme to be offered in Dubai.
The programme is being offered jointly by the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) in collaboration with Cass Business School at London's City University.
The EMBA will offer three alternative specialisations: Islamic finance, energy and general management and finance. The sponsors of the Dubai EMBA believe that their programme is the first EMBA in the world to offer specialisations in Islamic finance and energy.
It will be taught over 24 months and will involve the same content as Cass's London-based EMBA. The first class, of about 30 students, will begin in September.
Business opportunities
The programme aims to cash in on economic growth of the oil-rich region, at a time when the appetite for Islamic finance also seems to be on the increase.
In part, the growing business opportunities have been created by Muslim investors who are discovering unprecedented business opportunities in the Gulf. Many of these investors returned home following the outcry against Muslims in the months after the US terrorist attacks of September 2001 and remain wary of returning to the west, notably the US.
As Islamic finance begins to flex its muscles on the global stage, practitioners are discovering that the challenges are as plentiful as the opportunities. Structuring deals in accordance with Islamic principles is built largely around the prohibition of obvious vices such as restrictions on investments in businesses dealing with gambling, alcohol and pork. Additionally, there are restrictions on dealing with transactions built around fixed interest rates as practised by conventional banks.
Islamic bankers also find themselves tackling the finer details of contracts, involving significant paperwork. Their ultimate quest is to structure transactions that adhere to Islamic rules, have the approval of Islamic scholars and at the same time facilitate what could turn out to be extremely lucrative deals.
Financial institutions such as Islamic banks are facing a shortage of staff trained in these disciplines. While in the long term they solve the problem by recruitment and training, in the short term individuals in the workplace are likely to seize the initiative and enroll on an Islamic EMBA programme.
The new course is intended to reach out to prospective students from countries in the region. "We could become the trend-setters," says Fatin Hani, head of the education centre at DIFC. Hani's hope is that with appetite for qualified managers for Islamic banks running at an all-time high, the Cass-Difc programme will spur not only neighbouring business schools, but also offshore business schools looking for tie-ups in the region, to offer similar EMBA programmes with Islamic finance as their core focus.
The key challenge, she says, is to establish a high-quality programme while meeting the growing demand for well-qualified MBAs. A six-storey building within the Difc premises - including a mock trading room for Islamic products such as the fast growing sukuk - is intended to expose students to key practical considerations.
Finance and jurisprudence
Faculty members for the programme will come mainly from Cass, who will travel to Dubai to teach. They will be assisted by an advisory council drawn mainly from the Islamic banking and finance sector.
"The challenge for everybody in this area is to marry the knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence with modern finance," says Hassan Hakimian, associate dean, Off-Campus programmes at Cass.
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Source: Gulfnews.com |
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