The latest Top 25 country ranking of the 2008 Top 500 Islamic financial institutions listing demonstrates not only robust growth among the major countries but also the key development of Islamic finance in a number of relatively new markets, such as Indonesia, Qatar and the UK.
Total assets among Russia’s banks have posted robust growth in excess of 50% and there have been some structural improvements, but banks remain vulnerable to sudden changes in the health of the national economy and are looking decidedly over concentrated. Writer Stephen Timewell.
Unlike the past four successive years of record pre-tax profits and strong growth, The Banker’s 2008 Top 1000 World Banks rankings, based largely on fiscal 2007 results, reflected the US subprime crisis and global credit crunch and showed a 0.7% decline in profits to $780.8bn.