4. Theses

The derivatives markets in the Asian region have shown significant growth and development since their inception. Similarly, derivatives market in Malaysia and Bursa Malaysia Derivatives have experienced remarkable changes and developments. This study focuses mainly on the stock index futures contract (FKLI) and its relationship with the underlying spot index (FBM KLCI). The FKLI is chosen instead of other permissible futures due to availability of the data and its relevance in the context of fund managers' asset allocation strategy. The FKLI is chosen instead of other permissible futures due to availability of the data and its relevance in the context of fund managers’ asset allocation strategy. Mainly based on intraday data, this study makes an analysis of issues on pricing efficiency, the expiration-day effects on volume and volatility, the lead lag relationship between stock index and stock index futures, in Malaysian derivatives market as a newly advanced emerging market. Based on the underlying assumption that if a mispricing were to arise, unlimited arbitrage trading would trigger the market price back to its theoretical fair value and hedging effectiveness may go down as a result of pricing inefficiency, the first essay investigates the study of pricing efficiency specifically on the extent of mispricing by contract, evolution of mispricing, and mispricing episodes. Daily data based on the cost-of-carry model and 15-minute intraday data based on the basis model are used to address the issue of pricing efficiency. This essay fills the gap by introducing 15-minute intraday data, in addition to a larger time span of daily data. The results show variations in mispricing over time under study and provide valuable information for policymakers and fund managers as the Malaysia markets become more efficient and seem to provide a better avenue to hedge their positions and protect their investment values.

In the Islamic finance capital market spectrum, the potential of mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk is hampered with criticism by Shariah scholars. Among the criticisms include the presence of uncertainties surrounding sukuk returns, the risk of losses that the rabbul-mal (investors) have to bear, and the need to mitigate agency costs (for mudharabah contracts). This have made it a deterrent for both issuers and investors in seeing the instrument as a viable alternative to debt-based sukuk structures. This study proposes an improvement to musyarakah sukuk. It begins with a qualitative examination of the structure of corporate mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk issued in Malaysia. The examination finds risk-sharing sukuk structures in Malaysia contain features that supresses the risk sharing element between the sukuk investors and issuer. Findings from qualitative analysis is supported by generalized method of moments (GMM) and threshold analysis. Based on the sample of 86 corporate mudharabah and musyarakah sukuk issuances, the introduction of partnership sukuk in the firm's capital structure is found to be insignificant in affecting both firm risk and firm performance. The present partnership sukuk structure is then modified to incorporate variable returns (coupon payments) proportionate to the firm's net profits and variable principal repayment proportionate to the firm's total assets value. This study finds that when sukuk returns are made variable, sukuk investors are able to earn better/ equitable returns compared what they are earning in the current sukuk structure.

The study of currency exposure in the context of small open economies such as the ASEAN-4 region is important in view of the higher degree of openness of the economies and the progressive growth of the Islamic finance industry. This study examined the presence of currency exposure in a sample of 405 listed non-financial corporations from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand over a duration of 18 years from 1993 to 2010. This study is different from previous studies as it combines two assessment methods, i.e., the cash flow (CF) and stock returns (SR) approaches. Furthermore, this study covers two major events of the financial crises ...

This thesis investigates the determinants and impact of short-term capital flow in the 33 OIC countries from 2000 to 2018 and bridges the understanding between both literature strands. The short-term capital flows are divided into gross inflows, outflows, and extreme episodes, analyzed under the push-pull framework. The empirical approaches for exploring the determinants of short-term capital flows consist of panel static and dynamic LSDV and probit models. Additional analysis controlling for Lucas's paradox conditions provides more insights and robustness. The study then analyzes their impact on economic growth (GDP), conventional, and Islamic stock markets. The study employs time-series models (ARDL and NADRL) to test the impact of short-term capital flows on economic growth and stock markets. The models establish the long-term dynamic relationship and synergize with prior findings on the heterogeneous responses of each country. The findings suggest that short-term capital flows into the OIC countries are tied to the global commodity and domestic consumption effects, indicating the dominance effect from push factors and the global economic cycle. Regional contagion act as a transmission mechanism of episodic flows across the OIC. There is also clear evidence of each country's heterogeneous determinants and impact of short-term capital flows, emphasizing the important roles of pull factors and the level of capital account openness. The impact of STC flows on stock markets confirms that they are susceptible to global economies and uncertainty, especially in conventional stock markets. The findings for Islamic stock markets support the "decoupling hypothesis" since they are less affected by global shocks from higher risks and uncertainty. The overall findings imply the importance of capital liberalization, institutional quality, and the optimal sequence of capital liberalization.

Sukuk is dominating the Malaysian capital market with strong support from the government, mega-conglomerates and firms. As an important source of firms' financing, sukuk is increasingly catching up with existing conventional debt in terms of transaction volume and the number of deals. In spite of the rising interest among issuers in sukuk offers, research to appraise firm's issuance motives and the subsequent effects on shareholders' wealth upon sukuk and conventional bond announcement remains limited. Hence, through this initial study, firstly, we examine the association of firm specific characteristics with the respective debt security principles offers. Secondly, we also investigate the impact of each debt security offer announcement on issuer overall shareholders’ wealth effects. To address the first issue, we employed the dynamic GMM (both difference and system) analyses for testing the “partial adjustment model” with a view to investigating whether firms maintain an optimal target debt ratio when issuing each debt security principles, consistent with the trade-off theory key predictions. We also used the same model to examine the firm’s specific determinants of target debt ratio in an integrated approach. To address the second issue, we adopt both, “event-study” methodology and “wavelet” analysis. The aim is to examine the true dynamics of relationship between the debt security announcement and the shareholders’ wealth effects, given multi-horizon nature of investors.

This study examines the impact of ethical and Shariah screening on idiosyncratic risk, performance and dividend policy decisions for US market for the period 2006-2015. A unique dataset is utilized to construct representative portfolios of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), Shariah compliant investment and Market (proxy). The existing literature suggests that constraints on stock selection imposed by screening may limit investment universe and make faith based portfolios sub-optimal. Therefore, the investors who want to follow their religious or social beliefs need to incur cost of their values. Our results reveal that Shariah compliant investors are slightly disadvantaged in terms of idiosyncratic risk. However, they pay the price of holding religious beliefs by accepting lower risk-return trade off while SRI investors bear no such cost. Moreover, that there is not much variation in dividend policy of the faith based portfolios as compared to market proxy portfolio and good corporate governance promotes dividend payment for the sample portfolios. Furthermore, the firms with low idiosyncratic risk, low financial constraints, high book-to-market-assets ratio, high size and earned equity tend to pay higher dividends. Finally, it had been found that Shariah firms, unlike the market and SRI firms who prefer retaining excess cash, utilize high free cash flows to pay dividends to reduce agency conflicts.

This dissertation discusses a number of issues in Islamic equity, which can be broadly defined as equity investments that meet certain Shari'ah compliance requirements. A particular stock is deemed as Shari'ah compliant when it "passes" a screening process which encapsulates a number of relevant Islamic principles, rules and tenets. This process, commonly termed Shari'ah stock screening, essentially involves the negative screening or filtering of stocks. While variations may exist from one jurisdiction to another, and between a number of different Islamic index providers ... Available in physical copy only (Call Number: t HG 4551 N336)

This study investigates the roles of Shariah-compliant asset classes as well as Shariah-compliant portfolio strategies, which are divided into three separate essays. The first essay investigates both conventional and Islamic investors' problems as to whether the inclusion of Islamic and conventional asset classes may expand the frontier of their respective portfolios. The sample covers the global U.S. portfolios and Malaysian portfolios with multiple asset classes, as well as the portfolios with a specific asset class in several regions. The study uses the recent mean-variance spanning test in multiple regimes, which not only accounts for tail risk but also identifies the source of value added (tangency portfolio or global minimum variance) ...

The meaning of investments is that you sacrifice something valueable now in order to gain benefit from it in the future. Timing of the investment is of great importance (McDonald & Siegel, 1986, p. 724). One could invest in real assets, i.e. land, buildings, machines, and knowledge which are used in order to produce future goods and services. Investments could also be made in financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, which do not contribute directly to production but are used as claim-holdings on real assets. There are three main types of financial assets: fixed-income or debt securities, derivative securities and equity. Thus, investments operate mainly in financial markets. The major players of the financial market are firms, which mostly raise funds; households, which mostly save; and governments, which may act as borrowers as well as lenders. Since corporations and governments do not sell the largest part of their securities directly to individuals, the role of financial intermediaries is of great importance. Between the security issuer and the ultimate security owner, in most of the cases, financial institutions such as mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies and banks facilitate the process (Bodie et al., 2009, p. 1-33). One of the most common measures of stock and bond market performance is by indexes. Indexes are computed and published daily, providing investors possibilities to easily monitor performance of a particular equity (Bodie et al., 2009, p. 38). As globalization has spread international trade and cross border transactions have increased. Thus, daily information of the performance of indexes from all over the world has become a very important part of daily news for investors.

Due to the fact that Islamic financial securities may consist of ribawi (cash and debt) underlying assets, it is crucially important to discern whether or not the trading of these securities is subject to the Shari'ah rules for bay' al-sarf and bay' al-dayn. If they do not then what criterion is pertinent to their secondary trading; and on what jurisprudential basis? In answer to that question, the current scholarly views and suggested Shari'ah criteria for tradability of Islamic securities are not only diverse, but also at times incongruous with one another. Based on the qualitative approach of text analysis and semi-structured-interviews, this study critically analyse this issue ...

The issue of liquidity and under development of OIC stock markets has caused problems to companies in those countries that seek higher equity capital. Many institutions such as Islamic Development Bank (IDB), International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and OIC agree that the introduction of the Islamic Depositary Receipts (IDRs) could aid these companies in enhancing their value. As this instrument is yet to be introduced, this study aims to examine the financial implications of cross-listing via the existing Depositary Receipts (DRs). This is done by studying the impact of companies that have resorted to using American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) and Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) ...

The study investigates the impact of the global financial shocks on the correlations between the stock market and interest rate on the one hand and that between conventional and Islamic stocks on the other. The countries investigated are Malaysia, Indonesia, the U.S., Japan, the U.K., Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar with the sample period from December 2004 to December 2012. Changes in correlations for different time scales or investment horizons levels with wavelet analysis were tested. It was found that correlations among Islamic and conventional stock markets in non-shock periods tend to be ...

Among the available liquidity management instruments in Islamic banking, only sukuk of a particular type meet the requirements of HQLA (in principle) as defined by the Basel Committee and adapted for Islamic finance by the IFSB (Islamic Financial Services Board) (IFSB, 2017). Candidates for HQLA are only international sukuk, i.e. sukuk that are issued in an international currency, sukuk that are also publicly listed, and sukuk that are traded not only locally but also internationally. Sovereigns and international institutions such as the IDB (Islamic Development Bank) have issued almost all sukuk of this caliber. In this PhD thesis, the research will make empirically informed qualitative projections on the outlook for HQL (high quality liquid) sukuk to constitute the LAB (liquid asset buffer) portfolio for an Islamic megabank MDB (multilateral development bank) in the context of a rising global interest rate environment, falling oil prices, and a challenging global environment. Further qualitative projections about the prospects for the sukuk market are made based on a few case studies that encapsulate some of the critical limitation facing the sukuk market.

The changes in equity index composition have a dual impact, first, to the constituent stocks that make up the index and second, to the index funds that track the index. This study investigates the index effect at constituent stocks level and index funds level using Shari'ah blue-chip indices and their corresponding i-ETFs. The findings of this study provide a new evidence on price discovery contrary to index effect reported in conventional index studies. Specifically, the study discovers the index effect in an opposite direction, i.e., additions suffered negative abnormal returns while deletions gained positive abnormal returns around index revision period.

Capital structure which is the mixture of debt and equity capital of a company is very important since it is related to the ability of the company to fulfil the needs of its stakeholders. The main competing theories, which attempts to understand how financing decisions are made, that have emerged and developed over the last decades are the Trade-Off Theory and the Pecking Order Theory. Trade-Off Theory predicts that firms should balance the tax benefits of debt against the cost of debt, therefore firms should have an optimal capital structure. In contrast, Pecking Order Theory does not imply that firms capital structure decision is driven by the notion of optimal ...

Constructing a portfolio or investing in the stock market, without taking into account the firms' debt level is likely to render the control of returns, volatility and systematic risk ineffective. This study focuses on the European stock market which has suffered badly during the 2008 global financial crisis. It is within this context that the role of firm leverage and its relationship to risk and returns are explored. This innovative empirical study tests the leverage effect (on volatility, systematic risk, value at risk and returns) in terms of Shari'ah stock screening, and evaluates it applying random portfolio analysis, wavelet coherency and panel dynamic GMM techniques ...

Current sukuk structures often fall short of adequately meeting the Shariah conscious investors' needs. The objective of this dissertations is, therefore, to address this issue by conceptualizing and operationalizing three innovative models of sukuk. The first proposed model of sukuk is based on the concept of musharakah and is meant for companies and revenue generating infrastructure projects. The model has an incentive-compatible feature by making the share of the issuing entity in the profit positively related to its performance ...

Since the recent financial crises, increases in contagion and correlation between assets have reduced the possibility of minimizing risk by way of diversification. The investors are therefore, looking for alternative assets such as, commodities, Islamic portfolios, etc. However, despite the very rapid growth of Islamic finance, there has hardly been any rigorous empirical research investigating the risk-return profiles of combining commodity portfolios with Islamic equities and/or with the mainstream equities. This study is aimed at filling this gap in the finance literature ...

Financial liberalization became a key economic policy which was implemented by many emerging countries during the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, the academic critiques argue that it could render domestic stock markets highly volatile and economies susceptible to economic turmoil due to the irrational and pro-cyclical nature of international capital flows, and the characteristics of the emerging markets such as market imperfections, information asymmetry, and lack of sound financial infrastructure. The studies generally conducted during the 1990s and early 2000s suggest that being small in size, less liquid, less efficient, highly volatile, and having poor quality of legal environment and governance were common characteristics of the stock markets in the emerging Islamic countries (henceforth, EIC). Supporting this view, a divergence in the performance of stock market development and economic growth appears between EIC and emerging non-Islamic countries (henceforth, ENIC) since the 1990s, in favor of the latter. The limited and relatively dated literature studying the effect of financial liberalization, which is a broader approach, generally suggests that EIC could not derive benefits to the extent that is expected by the main stream. In this regard, Is stock market liberalization (henceforth, SML) a detrimental or beneficial factor for the stock market development and economic growth in EIC in the long run? becomes the problem statement of the study. In order to address the problem statement, the dissertation examines the effect of SML on the stock market volatility, cost of capital, stock market development, and finally economic growth in both EIC and ENIC in a comparative approach. Overall, the study results drived from linear models, i.e. static panel techniques, and non-linear models, i.e. ARCH and its variants, suggest that SML reduces the cost of capital, contributes on the stock market development and economic growth in both EIC and ENIC; and the effects are stronger, at least in magnitude, in EIC. It is suggested that financial liberalization is expected to improve the financial infrastructure by forcing the local authorities to implement necessary reforms in order to eliminate the market deficiencies and improve the standards of financial system. The reformation implemented during the late 1990s and early 2000s along with the policies to liberalize domestic capital markets is the main ground behind the study results.

This research investigates the determinants of Malaysian Sukuk’ credit rating by studying firm financial characteristic, corporate governance attributes, macroeconomic factors, and Sukuk structures. The sukuk structures determinants examine during the pre- and post-Shariah governance reform period (SG2010) to ascertain the effectiveness of the governance reform. Lastly, this research investigates the wealth effects of change in Sukuk ratings (upgrading or downgrading). Both listed and unlisted firms are analysed, with total 328 sukuk issuances and 1110 sukuk rating announcements from 2009 to 2014. Ordered logit regression and generalized ordered logit regression are used to explain the impact of different determinants on sukuk credit rating. Event study methodology was applied to ascertain the wealth effect of 16 sukuk upgrade and 20 sukuk downgrade announcements. The results on determinants of sukuk credit ratings indicate that a positive sukuk credit rating is associated with financial information, governance attributes, and sukuk structure whilst the macroeconomic factors did not influence sukuk credit ratings. More precisely, firm size, profitability, and leverage had significant positive effect on sukuk credit rating for listed firms whilst only firm profitability had a positive effect on sukuk credit rating for unlisted firms.

This study is motivated by the desire to test empirically whether the contagion seen in conventional stock indexes are also present amongst Sharia'ah-compliant stock indexes. This study is the first attempt at testing whether there has been any contagion among the Shari'ah-compliant stock indexes during the most recent international financial crisis - the US subprime crisis of 2007-2009. The study uses a technique known as the "wavelet approach" which has been very recently imported to finance from engineering sciences ...