EIIB…Ex-Bank – Love It!

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Arab Spring, asset managers, AUM, banks, de-leveraging, DiamondCorp, EIIB, European Islamic Investment Bank, frontier markets, GCC countries, HBG Holdings, inflation, Islamic finance, John Burbank, MENA, NAV discount, oil, Rasmala Holdings, real assets, Saudi Arabia, Sharia'a, TBTF, Zak Hydari

I have a long-standing aversion to banks. To me, they represent the perfect collision of two really bad ideas:

i) Regular investment in bonds & loans – a strategy offering little prospect of capital gain, but which will (quite often) attempt to wipe out your capital. And the paltry yield you earn offers little compensation. I’ve never understood how people ever find this ridiculously biased risk/reward proposition attractive.

ii) The answer lies in leverage, I guess… Another terrible idea, but this is the incredible solution people usually seize upon to juice low returns. And it usually works just long enough for everybody to forget how savagely leverage can impact liquidity & solvency, when things take an inevitable turn for the worse.

Banks, of course, take this bad marriage to its ultimate & ludicrous extremity. [And require even more leverage to overcome the drag of their cost:income ratios]. But consider the private & public incentives – why wouldn’t they?! When times are good, leverage multiplies profits…which multiplies bonuses! And leverage makes it far easier to reach that ideal bank status: TBTF, where the taxpayer’s forced to pay for your mistakes (& bonuses).

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EIIB – So, You Want to Run a Marathon..?!

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Damille, DiamondCorp, discount control mechanism, doughnut boy, EIIB, HBG Holdings, Laxey, marathon, NAV discount, Qannas Investments, quid pro quo, QVT, Rasmala, share buyback, sukuk, tender offer, Total Expense Ratio, track & field, Weiss

C’mon, you’re kidding..? No, seriously, you’re taking the mickey?! In March, the European Islamic Investment Bank (EIIB:LN) (which I last wrote about here) share price looked ready to challenge the GBP 3.9-4.25p resistance zone. This has capped EIIB for almost 3 years now. But here we are, 1 month later, and the price hit GBP 2.8p just in time for Easter – off 24%! No change in volume, or holdings…what’s going on?! And it’s not clear the board have noticed… But I’m sure they’re well aware of EIIB’s intrinsic value, and are focused on the marathon task of their new operating strategy…

All very well but, as any health professional will tell you, before embarking on (and to be successful in) a marathon, you should first do a health check and then scale up with plenty of walking, exercise, jogging, running and even some fartlek. So health check first, then track & field, and then marathon..! But the current share price (and NAV discount) certainly don’t present a healthy diagnosis of the budding athlete…

EIIB (EIIB:LN) – The Strongest Bank in the World? (Part II)

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activist investors, DiamondCorp, EIIB, Equity/Total Assets, HBG Holdings, Margin of Safety, Sharia'a, sukuk, value investing

European Islamic Investment Bank (EIIB:LN)

Mkt Price:  GBP 3.625p

Mkt Cap:  GBP 64.0 mio

Equity/Total Assets Ratio:  69.2%

P/B Ratio:  0.45  (adjusted)

P/C Ratio:  0.59  (adjusted) 

Fair Value:  GBP 8.09p

Upside Potential:  123%

Continuing from my previous EIIB post:     Let’s not forget that EIIB is a bank. Why am I re-stating the obvious? Well, I know it seems like banks are ten a penny (actually true in the US, with a recent count of 6,500 banks, if you can believe it!), but a new banking licence in the UK is a pretty rare thing. Especially an Islamic banking licence. I’ve no real idea of how much that’s worth, but it’s certainly a valuable intangible that isn’t listed anywhere on the B/S. EIIB presents a cheap entry to any financial institution who’s contemplating entering (or bulking up) in the UK and/or the Islamic finance market. When you consider the strength of EIIB’s B/S, the FSA licence (which would otherwise take at least a year to obtain) and the potential business contacts/opportunities gained, why not pay a premium to Book in a takeover situation? One should also consider the leverage potential implied – EIIB could almost quadruple its B/S, still be considered a very safe bank (with a near 20% Equity/Total Assets Ratio) and presumably achieve a radical transformation of its P&L and Return on Equity. Nobody’s cup of tea right now, and not a strategy that is being signaled by the company, but still something to consider…

EIIB (EIIB:LN) – The Strongest Bank in the World?

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DiamondCorp, EIIB, Equity/Total Assets, Goldman Sachs, Margin of Safety, Price/Book, Price/Cash, Sharia'a, sukuk, Tier 1 Capital, value investing

European Islamic Investment Bank (EIIB:LN)

Mkt Price:  GBP 3.75p

Mkt Cap:  GBP 66.2 mio

Equity/Total Assets Ratio:  69.2%

P/B Ratio:  0.46  (adjusted)

Price/Cash Ratio:  0.61  (adjusted) 

Congrats if you guessed I was referring to the European Islamic Investment Bank in my last post! EIIB’s the first independent Sharia’a compliant  Islamic bank authorized by the FSA. Headquartered in London, EIIB offers Sharia’a compliant treasury, investment, private equity and investment banking services. Established in early 2005, their FSA authorization process took a little over a year to complete. The bank then immediately opened up for business, following up with an IPO a month later. Fortunately, these were the boom times (aah, remember those days..?!) and they raised an impressive  GBP 183 mio of Equity from a private placing and their IPO.