Malaysian Rating Corporation Berhad (MARC) was honoured with the Best Islamic Rating Agency Award at the seventh Global Islamic Finance Awards (GIFA) on September 6, 2017. Held annually, the prestigious market-led Islamic finance awards programme recognises and celebrates the contributions of institutions and individuals to the development of Islamic banking and finance. This year, the awards were presented at a well-attended award ceremony held at the Kazakhstan capital city of Astana.
“MARC is deeply honoured to be named the Best Islamic Rating Agency in 2017 by GIFA. It is a great privilege to be recognised alongside institutions which have set the bar in Islamic finance,” said MARC’s Chief Executive Officer, Mohd Razlan Mohamed. This is the third time and second year in a row MARC has taken the honours for the best Islamic rating agency. “The common denominator of these awards is our longstanding commitment to keep pace with market innovation in Islamic finance and provide robust credit analyses,” said Razlan on the recurring accolade from GIFA.
Malaysia is widely recognised as a leader on the forefront of many of the global Islamic financial services industry’s pioneering and innovative achievements. Malaysia’s domestic sukuk market, a generally acknowledged success story, has taken the lead in developing and innovating new Islamic securities structures and in pioneering the Islamic capital market since 2000. Today, sukuk constitutes an important source of financing for domestic infrastructure development, project financing, corporate general purpose needs and bank capital. As at end-2016, total sukuk outstanding accounted for a significant 74% of the total domestic corporate bonds and sukuk outstanding.
MARC’s experience in rating sukuk parallels the development and growth of the domestic sukuk market. Since inception to end-July 2017, MARC has assigned a total of 408 ratings amounting to RM337 billion on a wide range of sukuk issued by both domestic and foreign entities. Noteworthy new sukuk programmes rated by MARC in 2016 include the Islamic Development Bank’s RM400.0 million Sukuk Wakalah issuance through the bank’s special purpose vehicle and Malaysia’s largest offering of project sukuk for the year, the RM3.64 billion multi-tranche Sukuk Wakalah by Lebuhraya DUKE Fasa 3 Sdn Bhd.
Contacts:
Ahmad Feizal Sulaiman Khan, +603-2717 2911/ feizal@marc.com.my;
Lana Mahbob, +603-2717 2912 / lana@marc.com.my.
