The Middle East

The maturation of Qatar’s Islamic financial services (IFS) industry over the past decade and a half has led the country’s sharia-compliant institutions to take a two-tiered approach to growing their business. First, the nation’s Islamic financial institutions have focused on serving domestic demand. Second, as in the conventional segment, many...

With balance sheet growth of 19%, up from 12% the previous year, at the end of 2014 Qatar was home to the fastest-growing Islamic banking segment in the GCC region, according to data released in late 2015 by the international ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P). The country’s four national sharia-compliant lenders – namely Qatar...

Over the past decade the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) has benefitted from a near-continuous series of reforms, and according to the government, additional improvements are expected to deepen the bourse considerably in the coming years.

After a banner year in 2014, Qatar’s capital markets endured a period of volatility in 2015. The Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) ended 2015 down around 15% on the previous year, according to data from the exchange. Market participants and observers alike attributed the drop to fluctuating investor sentiment linked to the continued decline of energy...

After half a decade of strong growth, Qatar’s banking sector is well positioned to weather regional economic volatility in 2016. As of the end of the first half of 2015 the country was home to the third-largest banking industry in the GCC, boasting total assets of $293bn. The sector consists of 18 institutions, including six domestic...

During her visit to Qatar in late November 2015, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, issued a statement endorsing the regulatory work carried out by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) in recent years. “Substantial progress has been made on enhancing financial sector regulation, including adopting the international regulatory...