MANAMA: The Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman Nick Anstee, will be visiting Bahrain next week with a team of 14 leading British financiers to boost business between the UK financial sector and the kingdom.
During his visit, which will include meetings with His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Economic Development Board chairman, the Lord Mayor will be meeting leading players in the Bahrain financial markets to strengthen ties between the UK industry and Bahrain.
He will visit Bahrain from February 16 to 19.
"The UK economy came out of recession in the final quarter of 2009 and with the renewed focus in Bahrain on economic growth and development the UK financial sector in now looking to strengthen its existing ties with Bahrain which is a key centre for our financial services sector," British Ambassador Jamie Bowden said yesterday.
"According to the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum, London is still the number one financial centre in the world," he said.
"Financial services and related services account for 11pc of UK gross domestic product and employ 1.5 million people.
"Almost every major international financial institution has an office in London and there are more foreign banks there than any other city in the world.
"But other UK financial centres are also important, including Edinburgh in Scotland which is a major international centre in its own right and Birmingham, a centre of Islamic banking," he said.
"The UK has outstanding and widely admired regulation, with an ability to adapt to changing circumstances and has a consistent, neutral and widely used legal system," he said.
"London has an unmatched breadth and depth of financial service expertise and is placed between the Gulf and Asian markets and the North American markets and has a world-renowned open business environment," he added.
He said that as the global economy returned from a downturn, the UK financial sector had much to offer to Bahrain in its role as a financial capital of the Middle East and a global centre of Islamic finance.
"London is the largest centre of Sharia-compliant activity outside the Muslim world and the eighth largest in the world," he said.
A total of 22 UK banks now offer Sharia-compliant services and five are fully Sharia compliant, the highest number in the West.
"We have 18 law firms in the UK offering advice on Sharia-compliant services and 55 training institutions of qualifications in Sharia-compliant finance.
"The London Stock Exchange is one of the premier venues for the listing of Sharia- compliant products globally and 19 issuers have listed sukuk issues raising $11 billion."
He added that to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the succession to the thrown of His Majesty King Hamad, the British Embassy in Bahrain planned to interview 10 of the most prominent local businessmen and publish these on its website to help build business relations between the kingdom and the UK.
