April 11th, 2011
The 17th Shariah Supervisory Board meeting of Meezan Bank Limited was held at the Darul Uloom Korangi, Karachi.
The meeting was chaired by Justice (Retd.) Muhammad Taqi Usmani; other members of the Shariah Board include Sheikh Essam M. Ishaq (Bahrain) and Dr. Muhammad Imran Usmani. The senior management of Meezan Bank including Mr. Irfan Siddiqui – President & CEO, & Mr. Ariful Islam – Chief Operating Officer were also present at the meeting.
The Shariah Board praised the performance of the Bank and showed overall satisfaction on the Shariah-conformity of the products and overall business and transactions of Meezan Bank. Several important matters including new products related to liquidity management using Sukuk and corporate financing were discussed and approved.
The Board also reviewed the Meezan Islamic Index Criteria for screening stocks for Shariah-compliance and decided to further improve the criteria of Total debt to Asset ratio from 40% to 37%. With the revision of this criterion, the companies where interest based debt to total assets are 37% or less would be considered eligible for the purpose of Islamic mutual funds and Meezan Islamic Index. This revision would encourage the corporate sector to shift toward Islamic banking to fulfill their financing needs.