Excerpt:
Islamic debt could become a source of funding for U.K. infrastructure projects from wind turbines to high-speed trains and airports as Britain cements its position as the first sukuk market in a non-Muslim nation.
Investors including Bank of London and the Middle East see scope for the U.K. to issue Shariah-compliant bonds with varying maturities after the Debt Management Office attracted bids for more than 10 times the 200 million pounds ($331 million) of securities offered at its debut sale in June.
Prime Minister David Cameron has pushed for sukuk sales to help establish London as a global capital for Islamic finance alongside Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, and tap into an industry that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP estimates will increase to $2.6 trillion by 2017. There is investor appetite for more sales that could help fund almost 400 billion pounds of planned infrastructure projects, said Mansur Mannan, executive director of DAR Capital in London.