The Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank and the Malaysia-based Islamic Financial Services Board are working together to discuss liquidity management issues in the Islamic financial institutions. The liquidity management problems are frequently mentioned, but there is an additional opportunity for the industry with the IDB and IFSB cooperation is that it is one more example of cooperation between industry bodies in the GCC and Malaysia. The different standards in the two regions have created some difficulty with compatibility of products.
Emirates NBD, the UAE-based Islamic financial institution, is launching a sukuk fund to purchase sukuk with depressed prices in the current economic environment. I wrote a blog post at Zawya a few days ago about the secondary market for sukuk and came to the conclusion that the lack of liquidity in the market had caused the steep drop in some prices using the JAFZ sukuk as an example.
South Korea is planning to change laws and regulations to attract Islamic finance, assuming that the industrial base provides an underlying asset to be used in structuring Islamic financial products.