It is not often someone can credibly lay claim to have played a pivotal role in creating a whole market, but one man who can is Rafe Haneef.
The sukuk bond market would not exist without him. He developed the concept while working at HSBC in 1999 and spent a further two years trying to convince rating agencies, stock exchanges, clearing houses, Islamic scholars, issuers and investors that sukuk would work.
Together with Stephen Williams, then HSBC’s head of Asian debt capital markets, the two were team managers of the Federation of Malaysia’s groundbreaking $600 million issue in June 2002.
Today, the...