Bahrain-headquartered and branch office in Malaysia Elaf Bank, a wholesale Islamic bank licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), announced that Chief Executive Officer Dr. Jamil El Jaroudi will depart at the end of this month to pursue other opportunities. Dr El Jaroudi has been running Elaf Bank since its inception in 2007 and spearheaded the opening of its first branch office in Malaysia that is credited to widening the scope and reach of the Bank’s cross-regional business.
The Board appointed Sohail Niazi, the COO of Elaf Bank, to assume the role of acting CEO.
“Dr. El Jaroudi built a solid institution with a very talented and capable team in place. His wealth of knowledge and experience in the Islamic finance industry and his strong leadership capabilities helped steer the team through a period of tremendous change and evolution. This has allowed Elaf Bank to make very positive progress in spite of the challenging economic difficulties witnessed worldwide,” Elaf Bank’s Chairman Paul Mercer paid tribute to Dr. El Jaroudi said.
“On behalf of the Board of Directors, the shareholders and the entire team at Elaf Bank, I would like to sincerely thank Dr. El Jaroudi for his dedicated service and wish him well in his future endeavours,” Mercer added.
Elaf Bank is a closed shareholding company incorporated in the Kingdom of Bahrain and licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain to operate as a wholesale Islamic bank with a paid-up capital of $200 million. The Bank encompasses the full spectrum of wholesale Islamic banking with an additional differentiating dimension geared towards developing the Sukuk secondary market to act as a market-maker. Elaf Bank provides a wide range of financial services to clients involving investment banking (fund-raising advisory, mergers and acquisitions and asset management), and treasury and capital markets (liquidity management, foreign exchange, investment, structured products and derivatives).