The first meeting of the heads of legal affairs departments in the banking units of Al Baraka Banking Group (ABG) concluded in Manama on Tuesday.
The meeting issued many recommendations and decisions that will contribute effectively to the development and consolidation of the legislative and legal structure of the Group as a whole.
The two day meeting started with a welcome from the member of the Board of Directors and President and Chief Executive Officer of Al Baraka Banking Group Adnan Ahmed Yousif, followed by the a speech of the Legal Department in the main office of the Group delivered by Salah Osman Abu Zeid, Senior Vice President Head of Legal Affairs and Compliance.
The meeting discussed the presentations conducted by the banking units of the Group in Jordan, Bahrain, Pakistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. The meeting also discussed the working papers on the standardization of documents in the global markets, consolidation of documents in the banking world, and the methodology and experience of unification of bank documents in sister institutions in countries with different legal systems.
The meeting reviewed a number of presentations prepared by ABG and addressed several important issues such as standardization of documents and potential Sharia challenges, issues that should be addressed from the perspective of the Operations Section in the unification of bank documents, documents of credit facilities, and the US law FACTA and international sanctions, as well as the experiences of the regional sub-committees.
“It is my pleasure to take ABG to another step towards strengthening its regional and global stands through the first meeting of heads of legal affairs departments in the units of the Group, after we achieved, with grace of God Almighty, consecutive successes over the past decade, which saw the beginning of the establishment of Al Baraka Banking Group, as a parent of subsidiary units deployed in thirteen countries across three continents of the world, and there are still in the womb of the parent company more units that will be delivered to cover all the continents of the world,” the member of the Board of Directors and President and Chief Executive Officer of Al Baraka Banking Group Adnan Ahmed Yousif said.
He added that the idea of this meeting generated from the strategy of the Group of unification of legal documents at the unit level and the Group, which is a big and ambition project that has been supported at the highest levels, both by the executive management of the Group and CEOs and general managers of units of the Group.
“We in the main office of the Group are counting a lot on what this project will achieve to confirm and strengthen the identity of Group’s banks, and show that they all work as a one bank , stems from unified vision and mission, and we will work to support this project until it is completed and implemented in the units of the Group, through the implementation of the recommendations and resolutions of this meeting, and provide all the necessary supplies needed to make this project a successful.”