This book is the outcome of a joint effort of a number of senior practising professionals as well as leading research scholars and educators in Islamic finance. The result is a reliable book on the subject of sukuk securities. Though this type of security is new ro modern Islamic finance, it has its historical roots some centuries earlier as a novel instrument developed in the Turkish Empire based on earlier practices of government treasuries to raise money. Sukuk securities were first offered just about 20 years ago as part of a slew of new Islamic financial products to fund activities mostly over a finite horizon, since these are financing contracts priced not by using interest rates but by using returns on profit sharing- based contracts and asset- backing for the finance provided.

A new type of debt securities called sukuk certificates have grown to US $840 billion in 11 financial markets as of 2011. These Islamic debt instruments share some features similar to conventional bonds, so market operators treat both as bonds. Whether it is appropriate to treat sukuk certificates as conventional bonds is empirically tested in this paper. If the yields of sukuk are the same as those of conventional bonds, Granger causality tests could confirm their equivalence. Practically the tests show otherwise. Also, the yields of sukuk instruments are significantly higher than yields of conventional bonds even after controlling issuers, rating quality and tenure in matched samples tests. Finally, sukuk issuance affects the issuing firm's beta risk significantly, which is consistent with capital structure theory. These new findings on the 10-year old Islamic debt market have regulatory and market making policy implications as to whether sukuk instruments should be classed as a new class of financial instruments, and not as bonds. Future research and market practices have to re-investigate a number of issues anew because sukuk market is for a different class of debt

The concept of Shariah governance has its foundation in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Shariah (which literally means "the way") is the divinely ordained guidelines of conduct for Muslims in all aspects of their life, which includes financial matters. Any form of transaction, irrespective of financial or otherwise, must be free of any element of injustice to the transacting parties.

This paper examines the flow-performance relationship and the presence of "Smart money effect" in Socially responsible funds (SRFs) and Shariah compliant funds (SCFs). A survivorship bias free sample of 686 funds comprising of 212 SCFs and 474 SRFs were analysed with investment focus in the Asia pacific, Emerging markets, Europe, Global (with no focus to any specific country or region), Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and North America. The findings show that flow-performance relationship is asymmetric for both the funds as the response to positive returns is more as compare to the negative returns for the last/current year as well as the last/current month. There is also a significant presence of "Smart money effect" in both the funds for the entire sample but there is no evidence of "Smart money effect" in SRFs for the sample of old funds.

Evidence of audit failures documented worldwide have led to major criticism of the auditing professions' independence and exposed its implication on shareholders and stakeholders' interests. External auditors are expected not only be independent but more importantly must be seen to be independent when examining and attesting clients' financial statements. Auditors are expected to decide on reporting strategies without any influence from their clients' management.

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between external audit price and corporate governance of the largest (based on market capitalization) 100 listed firms on both the main and second board of the Bursa Malaysia (BMB) (previously known as the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange). The findings show that for main board companies, external audit price is positively and significantly associated with corporate size, complexity and internal governance variable (i.e. director's remuneration). For the second board firms, complexity, corporate size and internal governance variables (i.e. proportion of non-executive directors to total directors) were important determinants of external audit pricing. External audit price had a significant negative relationship with individual shareholders ownership for both main and second board companies, and companies' age for companies listed on the second board.

Over the last few decades, the Islamic financial system has shown a strong and improved performance, where the global total assets of the industry as of end 2014 has exceeding USD2.0 trillion or a compounded annual growth rate (GACR) of 17.4% between 2009 and 2014. The Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) reported monumental issuances in sovereign sukuks by the governments of the UK, Senegal, Hong Kong, South Africa and Luxembourg ammounting to USD 115 billion.

It is well documented in developed economies that portfolio investment across national borders brings benefits of increasing returns and/or reducing risk. Dividing MENA stock markets into two main groups (oil producing and non-oil producing countries), this study examines the potential role of each group in providing diversification benefits for international investors. In addition, the behavior of the long and the short-run Efficient Frontiers (EFs) constructed by each of the sub-groups and the combined MENA markets is explored. Multi-objective international portfolio models are proposed under Mean-Variance and Mean-Lower Partial Moment frameworks, and the Multiple Fitness Function Genetic Algorithm (MFFGA) is used to find the EFs of optimal portfolios. The findings indicate that the stock markets of oil producing countries can be considered as a potential avenue for international portfolio diversification for investors not only from the same countries but also from the other MENA markets. It was also found that international portfolios constructed from the combination of MENA equity markets are more stable compared to the portfolios of sub-group markets. Further, the findings indicate that the behavior of short-term EFs in the MENA region cannot be predicted by the behavior of long-term EFs.

This article examines the value-added phenomenon of Malaysian horizontal merger and acquisition activities (M&A) in the long run for the period 1994–2010. In this regard, this article used economic value-added (EVA) approach and cost-efficiency approach (stochastic frontier analysis (SFA)) to investigate synergistic benefits. The findings suggest that bidder firms experience no significant improvement in operating and financial efficiencies in the long run. Specifically, the operating performance of bidder firms deteriorated after the merger exercise, whereas the target firms had no significant improvement in operating performance over the same period. In summary, the findings suggest no synergistic gains from horizontal mergers in Malaysia. These findings imply that the long-run performance of firms in the horizontal mergers or acquisitions is driven by other motives rather than synergistic gains.

Documented evidence on conventional bond markets shows negative market reaction to bond credit rating downgrade and no reaction to credit rating upgrade. Despite the fact that sukuk issuances make up more than 58.8% of the value of outstanding bonds in the country and Malaysia issues at least half of the world's sukuk and is widely recognized as a leader in the sukuk space, there is no documented evidence on the stock market reaction to sukuk credit rating changes. This study analyzed the wealth effect of sukuk credit rating changes in Malaysia using 16 sukuk upgrades and 20 sukuk downgrades for the period 2000-2014. The evidence shows negative market reaction to downgrades and positive significant reaction to sukuk rating upgrade. This symmetrical market reaction to sukuk credit rating changes implies the market was indifferent between bonds and sukuk from the credit rating perspective. This finding supports the notion that the credit rating agencies are Shariah-neutral when rating these capital market instruments.

This paper investigates the characteristics, performance, and share price reaction of politically connected firms versus a control sample of independent firms in Malaysia. Politically connected firms had higher level of leverage, lower profitability, and lower sales to profitability, and paid lower taxes and lower dividends compared to independent firms. Their share prices increase with the announcement of favorable political events. In terms of performance, the active rent-seeking activities in return for preferential treatment produce comparable performance to independent firms during an economic upturn. However, their performance deteriorates more than independent firms during an economic downturn. The percentage of ownership of government institutions in politically connected firms is also much lower, and these firms use more Tier 1 auditors than the independent firms. Overall, the findings are consistent with expectations and evidence from similar studies in developed and developing economies