Liquidity Management Centre (LMC) has been awarded the Best Debt House - Bahrain 2005 at the EUROMONEY Awards for Excellence. The award was presented at a special awards ceremony held at the Ritz Carlton, Bahrain.
Mr. Aref A. Kooheji, who received the award on LMC’s behalf said, “I feel privileged to receive this award. As an organisation we have been striving to maintain an innovative and client focussed approach to the arrangement of Sukuk. To a large degree the receipt of this award is confirmation of this. I augur that we can further maintain this momentum into next year under the continued direction of our senior management and our product development and support teams.”
LMC’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ahmed Abbas who was also in attendance at the ceremony to receive the award, said: “This award comes on the back of our earlier EUROMONEY award of ‘Best Domestic Market Sukuk House 2005’ and provides further evidence of our established market pedigree and discipline. I continue to feel extremely satisfied with the recognition conferred on LMC by this award as it provides further independent validation of our primary market activities. We have a very dedicated, technically knowledgeable and client focussed team which is gradually expanding in line with our deal flow. We continue to strive to play our role in the continued development of the global Islamic Finance market. As an organisation, we recognise the continuing support provided to us by our Chairman, Mr. Aref A. Kooheji, our Board of Directors and our Shareholders, without whose respective support our achievement would not have been possible. I would also like to express my appreciation to all of my professional and support staff for their dedication and application.”
LMC has arranged and placed a number of high-profile and diverse Sukuks totalling over US$750 million. The US$100 Million Commercial Real Estate Sukuk Company issue was the last Sukuk to be issued with the issuance of the US$100-170 million Al Marfa’a Al Mali (Bahrain Financial Harbour) Sukuk due to follow very shortly.
About Liquidity Management Centre:
LMC was established in July 2002 under the auspices of a Bahrain Monetary Agency initiative. It is a Bahraini Joint Stock Company with an Islamic Investment Banking License. It was established to enable Islamic financial institutions to manage their liquidity through short and medium term liquid investments compliant with Shari’a guidelines. As part of executing this mandate LMC is an active player in the primary Sukuk (Islamic Financing) arranging and advisory market and also in the establishment of a secondary market for short term Islamically compliant treasury products across the GCC region. LMC also has the capability to arrange other innovative Islamic investment instruments of varying risk and return profiles at different tenors.
LMC is owned and strongly supported by four leading Islamic institutions in equal shares of 25%, namely: Bahrain Islamic Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank, Islamic Development Bank and Kuwait Finance House (Kuwait). Mr. Aref A. Kooheji is the current LMC Chairman and represents Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) on the LMC Board. He is an extremely well experienced Banker who has worked for a number of well reputed global financial institutions.
