Overview

Mayer Brown has significant experience advising on various structures and arrangements for finance transactions that comply with Shari'ah principles. These transactions range from real estate finance, through to structured finance and derivatives, restructuring and capital markets transactions. We have advised on the development of Shari’ah-compliant structures for leveraged real estate investment funds, including the development of an alternative to the Ijara leasing structure as the basis for investment by a proposed Islamic Fund. We have also advised a number of Lloyd's underwriters and company market insurers on Shari'ah-compliant insurance and reinsurance (takaful and retakaful) arrangements.

Experience

  • We acted as international counsel to The Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation and Cagamas Berhad (the national mortgage corporations of Hong Kong and Malaysia respectively) in preparing master program documentation for the Malaysian joint venture that they established to provide residential mortgage guarantees to Malaysian mortgage lenders. The program offers two types of products initially - a conventional guarantee in the form of a bespoke credit default swap based on ISDA documentation and an Islamic guarantee in the form of a Kafalah/Wakalah structure.
  • We have drafted Sale and Purchase Agreements and Repurchase Agreements to satisfy the specific requirements of banks' Shari’ah advisory committees. These include drafting a Master Islamic Repurchase Agreement, which was structured flexibly for use with different forms of repurchase agreements, allowing our client to offer a comprehensive Islamic service without having to create specialized documents for each type of transaction while simultaneously allowing flexibility for our client's customers in the type of transactions they entered into.
  • We have advised on loans to various Islamic investment houses to fund the acquisition, using Shari'ah-compliant structures, of real estate investment assets. Shari’ah-compliant structures on which we have advised include sale and leaseback transactions and debt financing.
  • We have advised on Shari’ah-compliant structures for multiple joint ventures created to invest in real estate such as an industrial property joint venture with a fund sponsored by Boubyan Bank, a Kuwait-based Islamic bank.

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