Boubyan Bank last week signed a deal to acquire a 20% stake in Bank Muamalat Indonesia, which controls nearly half of the Asian nation's Islamic banking sector, the Head of the Kuwaiti Islamic bank said.
Boubyan Bank “aims through this deal to make Bank Muamalat Indonesia the strategic passageway to the rest of the East Asian countries,” said Chairman and Managing Director Yacob Al Muzaini. He did not specify the value of the deal.
Boubyan Bank aims to start providing full commercial banking services to the public in the third quarter of this year and will compete with Kuwait Finance House, which now has a monopoly on Islamic banking in the Gulf Arab state.
Al Muzaini said Bank Muamalat Indonesia controls up to 50% of the Islamic banking sector in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. He said the Indonesian bank, set up in 1991 as that country's first Islamic bank, now has 156 branches and up to one million customers.
Islamic banking amounts to 1.9% of the total banking sector in Indonesia, he said, but the government has plans to increase that share to about 5%. Up to 90% of Indonesia’s 220 million population are Muslims.
Source: www.IslamicFinanceNews.com |
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