NEW YORK, Aug. 4, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dow Jones Indexes, a leading global index provider and premier provider of Shari'ah compliant indexes, announced Tariq Al-Rifai as its new director of Islamic indexes.
Mr. Al-Rifai was tapped to bring his extensive expertise as a leading authority on Islamic equity and private equity funds to Dow Jones Indexes to further advance its leading position in providing Shari'ah compliant indexes to the investment world. He will be based in Dubai and will focus on extending the reach of Dow Jones Indexes' Shari'ah compliant index products globally. He also will maintain relationships with financial institutions around the world.
His key responsibilities will be to work with Dow Jones Indexes institutional clients to identify new business opportunities, develop new Shari'ah compliant indexes and work with money managers and educate investors. As the leading Islamic finance expert Mr. Al-Rifai will be the main liaison between Dow Jones Islamic Market Shari'ah Supervisory Board of five international scholars and Dow Jones Indexes' maintenance, research and development teams, which are responsible for screening the Shari'ah compliant index universe as well as building new indexes.
"Having Tariq join our team is a great win for Dow Jones Indexes. His knowledge about Islamic Finance and his broad industry relationships will assure that the Dow Jones Islamic Index family continues to be the leader in Islamic indexing. Tariq will reinforce and support Dow Jones Indexes' commitment to innovative, meaningful and relevant Islamic indexes in the future," said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes. "The Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes are unique, were first to market and continue to be the standard of Islamic indexing around the globe."
The 13-year Islamic industry veteran founded Failaka Advisors in 1996 to promote and develop Islamic financial instruments. The research organization became a leading provider of Islamic market research and fund performance. Since May 2004, Mr. Al-Rifai has served as vice president, UIB Capital, Inc., Chicago. Previously he was vice president Islamic Banking at HSBC Bank in New York and was partner at The International Investor, a Kuwaiti shareholding company.
Mr. Al-Rifai has a bachelor degree in International Business Finance from Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota and an MBA in International Business management from DePaul University in Chicago.
Journalists may e-mail questions regarding this press release to PR-Indexes@dowjones.com.
About Dow Jones Indexes
A full-service index provider, Dow Jones Indexes develops, maintains and licenses indexes for use as benchmarks and as the basis of investment products. Best known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Indexes also is co-owner of the Dow Jones STOXX indexes, the world's leading pan-European indexes that are an integrated segment of the Dow Jones Global Index series. Additionally, Dow Jones Indexes maintains its benchmark index series, the Dow Jones Total Stock Market Indexes, which is anchored by the Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index and covers more than 12,000 securities in 65 markets. Beyond equity indexes, Dow Jones Indexes maintains a number of alternative indexes, including measures of the hedge fund and commodity markets. Dow Jones indexes are maintained according to clear, unbiased and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families. www.djindexes.com
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