Are you allocating assets to Halal Food sector? Are you aware of how Halal food sector have performed over the past 12 months? If you want to find out how Halal companies are out-performing the Dow Jones Titans, then you have to attend the IHMC 2010 in Brunei on 5th June! Rushdi Siddiqui, Global Head of Islamic Finance at Thomson Reuters has just given us a sneak preview of the latest research going on at TR, and while we cannot reveal much at this stage, the headlines will enough to make investors and fund managers sit up and take notice.
In the past few months there have been some indications that the convergence between Islamic Finance and the Halal food sector is starting to move, and this latest bit of news is a strong confirmation.
Siddiqui, an Industry veteran, is the first person to go to these uncharted water and point out that there is a serious disconnect between the Shariah compliance methodologies at work in the two sector of food an finance. “There are companies that you could invest in, from an Islamic standpoint, but you could not eat their food products. Conversely, there are companies whose products you can eat, they are Halal certified, but you could not consider them as an Islamic investment.”
Intrigued by this Halal market paradox, Siddiqui started to research the matter further together with the research team at IdealRatings, a Thomson Reuters Partner. Using the state of the art research tools from IdealRatings, and by looking into the food-related publicly-listed companies in the 15 leading OIC-member countries, Siddiqui and Co have come up with some intriguing results that may well encourage a fresh look at the Halal sector.
Not only will it be fascinating to see which countries come out on top, but also how this emerging market index shapes up by sector, such as agri-based, processing, food service, retail and restaurants, as well as the new personal care sector.
He is also preparing data on how these countries fare when measured against the AAOIFI Shariah-compliance protocols, a well as the market capitalisation for the various sectors.
This is all ground-breaking stuff; no one has ever used this kind of lens to look into the Halal industry until this point, and it represents a new turning point in the maturating process of the Halal markets.
For the first time, Rushdi Siddiqui will be presenting his findings at the IHMC 2010, the 5th International Halal Market Conference in Brunei on 5-6 June in a Session entitled “Converging Market Forces”. He is joined in this session by UK’s David Smith of Global Futures and Foresight and by Shahed Amanullah, founder of HalalFire Media from the USA.
And that’s just one Session out of six! For full programme details, see www.ihmcbrunei.com
