Investors keen to find route to Shariah compliant hedge funds

A long/short hedge fund strategy is the plain vanilla of the industry. Finding a Shariah-compliant way to achieve the same strategy is at the heart of the Al Safi hedge fund platform. Finding a workable solution was a complex task.

For the past 10 years there have been various attempts to develop a Shariah compliant hedge fund investment route to cater for ethical Islamic sovereign wealth investors, pension funds, other institutional investors and retail investors.

Several have launched and failed, mainly due to the lack of a significant sponsor prepared to supply the seed capital necessary to create a profitable platform. Although several fund-linked derivatives exist, their uptake among the Islamic investor community has