DELOITTE CHOOSES MALAYSIA FOR ISLAMIC FINANCE HUB

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 24 (Bernama) -- Deloitte has set up an Islamic finance
centre of excellence in Malaysia to provide consultation on Islamic finance for
the Asia Pacific region.

This is the professional services firm's only such centre in the region and
one of its three globally together with London and Dubai.

Deloitte's Asia Pacific chief executive officer Chaly Mah Chee Kheong said
the company had started to build a team of between eight and 10 professionals to
be based in the Kuala Lumpur office and would continue to recruit more.

"The concept of a centre of excellence will be a core of people to
understand Islamic finance and all the complexities around this product," Mah
said at a media conference here Tuesday.

"We have similar teams in the Middle East and London as well," he said.
Deloitte's Islamic finance specialist Daud Vicary Abdullah said the centre
of excellence was complementary to Islamic banking services.

"We are not a training centre although we are prepared to train. We do
business directly with clients at our level of expertise," Daud said.

"Generally we work together with them (Islamic banks). We can provide
services to them because we have some expertise which banks don't have or
perhaps strategically don't want to focus on and don't want to create a
specialised team to do things internally," he said.

Daud also said that many traditional non-Muslim countries such as Singapore,
the United Kingdom, Japan and Hong Kong have expressed interest in becoming
major players in the Islamic finance industry.

"Some have even gone as far as to amend their legislations and tax regimes
to accommodate requirements unique to Islamic finance," he said.
-- BERNAMA