'Rock star' scholars a risk for Islamic finance

Decades of parsing turgid legal documents have not dampened the enthusiasm of octogenerian Islamic scholar Sheikh Hussein Hamed Hassan. He gets agitated as he searches for a paper among piles of documents strewn across his posh Dubai office.

Wearing a dark grey suit with no tie, the Egyptian-born academic talks to a visitor for almost two hours about Islamic banking, which he has been instrumental in developing over half a century of writing and lecturing.   

"Listen to me. You have to understand the basics of sharia, what's allowed and not allowed in Islam. If you get it, then you'll write it. And the whole world will understand," he says.

Sheikh Hussein is one of the world's most sought-after scholars in applying sharia or Islamic law to finance, chairing no fewer than 22 of the boards which rule on whether products and practices in the industry obey religious principles.

One position in particular stands out. As chairman of the sharia advisory board of London- and Dubai-based consultants Dar Al Istithmar, he is having to answer some searching questions on behalf of one of its most high-profile clients, US investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Last October Goldman announced it would issue as much as $2 billion in sukuk or Islamic bonds, making it one of the first top Western banks to raise money in that way. But the plan has run into controversy among potential investors over whether it follows Islamic principles, as Dar Al Istithmar insists it does. There is also controversy over the fact that Goldman publicly named at least three Islamic scholars as potential advisers on the sukuk even though they had not even seen the prospectus.

"A copy of the Goldman Sachs sukuk prospectus was sent to these scholars for consultation but they never responded back," Sheikh Hussein told Reuters.

"They could be busy or did not approve the structure, but we didn't hear from them. Their approval is not necessary anyway."

The controversy over the Goldman sukuk illustrates some of the weaknesses of the Islamic finance industry. These are leading to growing pressure for reform of the scholar system, though the power of entrenched interests, and the difficulty of coordinating policy in an industry where authority is spread across the Middle East and southeast Asia, may slow any change.

Scholars such as Sheikh Hussein command great influence but their opinions, lacking definitive legal sanction, are often challenged, creating an uncertain regulatory environment. And some scholars sit on scores of boards, leaving them open to charges of conflict of interest and making it hard for them to keep up with all areas of their work.

"The big problem is that there just aren't enough of them," said one Dubai-based banker in the industry, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. "It''s a bit like being a rock star. They are disproportionately recognised, with people saying: 'I want that name in Malaysia, I want that name in Bahrain.'"

Islamic finance, based on principles such as bans on interest and pure monetary speculation, has grown rapidly over the last several years because it draws on pools of investment money in the oil-rich Gulf and Asia that have been relatively untouched by the global financial crisis.

The industry's global assets are expected to rise 33% from 2010 levels to $1.1 trillion by the end of 2012, according to consultants Ernst & Young. Islamic finance will remain far smaller than conventional finance, with its tens of trillions of dollars, but the gap may continue narrowing; Ernst & Young expects Islamic banking in the Middle East and North Africa to expand over the next five years at a compound annual rate of 20%, versus less than 9% for conventional banks.

Sharia scholars, with expertise in both religious and conventional law, are key to this growth. Investors will not buy instruments without believing they are religiously acceptable, so most wholly Islamic financial firms have their own board of sharia scholars which certifies products and monitors the firm's business.

"Independent" sharia boards also exist, offering their services to financial firms for a price.

There are over 400 sharia scholars worldwide but only around 15 to 20 prominent and experienced ones, which creates demand for scholars to sit on multiple boards. The top 20 scholars hold 14 to 85 positions each, occupying a total of around 620 board positions or 55% of the industry, data compiled by investment research firm Funds@Work show.

The shortage of scholars is a capacity constraint for the industry, said Sheikh Muddassir Siddiqui, a sharia scholar and Harvard-trained attorney at law firm SNR Denton. He is a member of the sharia standards committee of the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), a Bahrain-based body setting standards for the industry.

"If you engage a lawyer or a doctor you would naturally want someone with a big name and reputable," said Siddiqui.

"But unlike a rock star who can entertain thousands of people at once, a sharia scholar's role should be viewed more like a doctor's -- it is natural to ask how many surgeries a doctor can perform in one day. It is a question of capacity."

The capacity problem is worsened by the fact there is no single, universally accepted interpretation of religious principles. So firms seek out the scholars who they think will carry the most weight with investors' in effect, a scholar's reputation becomes a currency used in completing a deal.

"The reason the Islamic finance industry is still emerging is that governance standards are not as well established as in other industries," said Murat Ã'nal, CEO of Funds@Work.

"It's like a social network. People and their relationships play a very important role. If you have a prominent scholar on board, this increases trust and makes up for the lack of governance standards. Institutions sell their products via the reputation of the scholars, so you better make sure you have accepted scholars on board."

And this leads to sky-high fees paid to the top scholars. A senior banker at an Islamic lender said some scholars could be paid $1,000 to $1,500 per hour of consultation -- in addition to an annual bonus of between $10,000 and $20,000 per board seat.

Sheikh Hussein and other scholars strongly reject the idea that there is anything improper in the fee system.

"What's wrong with getting paid for issuing a fatwa or reviewing the sharia compliancy of a financial instrument?" Sheikh Hussein said.

"We're just like auditors, lawyers. Each one of us has years and years of experience in sharia law. We do our job and get paid for it. Nobody is allowed to question our honour, integrity and truthfulness."

Nevertheless, the system is open to accusations of conflict of interest because scholars head or sit on the boards of the industry's standard-setting bodies, such as AAOIFI, at the same time as they are being paid handsomely by the firms which are being regulated.

In some ways the situation is similar to that of credit rating agencies in conventional financial markets. The agencies are paid by the companies they rate, which may have made them slow to downgrade debt before the global financial crisis, allowing imbalances to build up that triggered the crisis.

"Certainly there is a need for improvement in the way sharia supervisory boards play their role," said Sheikh Siddiqui.