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The present study aims to evaluate the VBI strategies that have been implemented and to analyze the implementation challenges that BIMB has encountered.

A case study method was used to generate an in-depth and multi-faceted understanding of VBI strategy implementation in Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad (BIMB). A semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted with BIMB which is among of the earliest members of the VBI Community of Practitioners (CoPs). The data were transcribed and analyzed based on the content and thematic analyses.

This paper provides insights into how Islamic bank, i.e. BIMB, implement initiatives and strategies for adopting VBI based on the four underpinning principles. VBI is seen as a continuous strategy implementation of what has been practiced in BIMB, for instance, the Sadaqah House initiative introduced in 2018.

The primary limitation of the study is that it only focused on BIMB and does not represent the larger members of VBI CoPs among Islamic banks in Malaysia. A larger sample would have given more trustworthy results and could give better insights on the VBI implementation.

A good strategy implementation can be realized by generating a positive and sustainable economic, societal and environmental impact consistent with sustainable shareholder returns and long-term interests. The regulator should consider the policy implications of this study by strengthening the VBI and encouraging more Islamic and conventional banks to adopt it based on the findings.

The originality of this study is that it focuses on strategy implementation and the challenges facing Islamic bank toward VBI. It provides information on the implementation strategy of VBI in Islamic banks in Malaysia and facilitates other Islamic banking institutions, specifically future members of CoPs in creating a strong ethical foundation.

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature by providing evidence for a “greenium” in the primary Sukuk market. The term “greenium” is defined in the study as the lower cost of capital or reduced yields that green Sukuk may offer compared to non-green Sukuk, reflecting investor willingness to accept lower returns for green investments. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the potential role of “greenium” as an incentive for issuers to fund eco-friendly projects, contributing to a sustainable environment.

This study uses propensity score matching techniques to provide an accurate comparison of pricing differences between green and non-green Sukuk issued in global primary markets during the period 2017–2022.

The results reveal that green Sukuk signify a “greenium” effect. This suggests that investors find green Sukuk attractive, willing to accept lower returns. Given the positive investor response to green initiatives in the market, issuers can capitalize on the growing demand for green Sukuk, leading to low-cost funding.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature at the interface of Islamic finance and environmental sustainability. In particular, it stands out by focusing on the pricing dynamics in the green Sukuk market and highlights the potential benefits of issuing green Sukuk to help achieve sustainability goals while providing access to lower cost of capital for the transition to a low-carbon economy.

This study aims to empirically investigates the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on ethical and nonethical stocks in Indonesia. Ethical stocks which are characterized by moral-based companies’ activities and lower debt are expected to have better resilience during the COVID-19 crisis compared to nonethical stock.

This study observes 589 firms of ethical and nonethical stock during sample periods ranging from March 2, 2020 (first case announced) to June 30, 2021. Panel regression, with some control variables, was applied.

Testing firms in Indonesia revealed a significant difference in stock resilience, in which ethical stock has a better resilience compared to nonethical, with Islamic socially responsible investment (SRI) stock having the highest resilience, followed by Islamic stock and then SRI stock. This study documents a significant effect of some financial criteria on the stock resilience, namely, return market (RM), market capitalization (MCAP) and share turnover (TURN). Overall, after splitting the sample into different time horizons, this study consistently reveals that ethical firms have better resilience compared to nonethical stocks.

This study makes several contributions to the literature on Islamic finance, especially concerning Islamic screening with SRI factors. In practical terms, this study supports the argument that focusing on integrating environmental, social and governance criteria in sharia screening will improve the quality of Islamic firms. The “Islamic” label is not only a marketing label but also a quality certification.

This study can be used as a reference for developing Islamic finance more focused on sustainability issues including socioeconomic and human development by improving the quality of screening of Islamic firms. Therefore, this study suggests that the establishment of Islamic SRI index is very crucial and significant to promote ethical-based investment.

The purpose of this paper was to explore the impact of interest rate shocks on the deposits and financing of Islamic and conventional banks in Saudi Arabia.

The authors use impulse response functions (IRFs) and variance decomposition (VDC) analyses over the period 2008Q1–2020Q2.

The IRFs showed that increasing interest rates reduce loans and conventional deposits. For Islamic banks, the deposits are more affected by interest rate changes than the financing. The VDC analysis found that deposits contribute up to 61% of Islamic financing variations, compared to only 25% in conventional lending ones.

This research contributes to the field of Islamic economics and finance by providing empirical evidence on how interest rates likely impact Islamic and conventional deposits and financing in Saudi banking system.

This study aims to investigate the conditional volatility of the Asian stock market concerning Bitcoin and global crude oil price movement.

This study uses the newest Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC)-Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to examine the conditional volatility of the stock market for Bitcoin and crude oil prices in the Asian perspective. The sample stock market includes Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian, Pakistani, Singaporean, South Korean and Turkish stock exchanges, with daily time series data ranging from 4 April 2015−31 July 2023.

The outcome reveals the presence of volatility clustering on the return series of crude oil, Bitcoin and all selected stock exchanges of the current study. Secondly, the outcome of DCC, manifests that there is no short-run volatility spillover from crude oil to the Malaysian, Pakistani and South Korean and Turkish stock markets, whereas Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Singapore stock exchanges show the short-run volatility spillover from crude oil in the short run. On the other hand, in the long run, there is a volatility spillover effect from crude oil to all the stock exchanges. Thirdly, the findings suggest that there is no immediate spillover of volatility from Bitcoin to the stock markets return volatility of China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Korea and Singapore. In contrast, both the Japanese and Turkish stock exchanges exhibit a short-term volatility spillover from Bitcoin. In the long term, a volatility spillover effect from Bitcoin is observed in all stock exchanges except for Malaysia. Lastly, based on the outcome of conditional variance, it can be concluded that there was increase in the return volatility of stock exchanges during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis below does not account for the bias induced due to certain small sample properties of DCC-GARCH model. There exists a huge literature that suggests other methodologies for small sample corrections such as the DCC connectedness approach. On the other hand, decisive corollaries of the conclusions drawn above have been made purely based on a comprehensive investigation of eight Asian stock exchange economies. However, there is scope for inclusive examination by considering other Nordic and Western financial markets with panel data approach to get more robust inferences about the reality.

Most of the empirical analysis in this perspective skewed towards the Nordic and Western countries. In addition to that many empirical investigations examine either the impact of crude oil price movement or Bitcoin performance on the stock market return volatility. However, none of the examinations quests the crude oil and Bitcoin together to unearth their implication on the stock market return volatility in a single study, especially in the Asian context. Hence, current investigation endeavours to examine the ramifications of Bitcoin and crude oil price movement on the stock market return volatility from an Asian perspective, which has significant implications for the investors of the Asian financial market.

This study investigates how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors influence intangible asset and intellectual capital valuation within the food and beverage (F&B) industry. By examining and contrasting global and European contexts, the research highlights ESG’s critical role in shaping the economic dimensions of sustainability across different regulatory environments. The results provide essential insights for stakeholders aiming to enhance corporate value through responsible business practices.

We adopt a quantitative fixed-effects panel regression analysis for ESG performance and intangible asset and intellectual capital values. The correlations between these variables are explored both globally and in the European Union using 1,034 observations from 502 F&B companies.

Globally, higher ESG performance corresponds to lower intangible asset values, a trend not observed in the European Union. Further, high ESG performance is associated with a decrease in intellectual capital value, suggesting that internal organisational efforts in this area should be rewarded in terms of short-term value.

This study provides a new understanding of the relationship between ESG performance, intellectual capital, and the F&B industry operating environment, highlighting the complexity and challenges associated with integrating ESG practices.

Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a major milestone for a company. It allows a private company to issue shares to a much broader group of investors and become public. But conclusive evidence of the driving forces behind investors’ demand is yet to be identified. Therefore, the major purpose of this study is to assess the level of investors’ demand in IPO and how investors’ demand in IPOs is affected.

The study will employ 80 IPO companies of a Muslim-majority country, Bangladesh, starting from 2013 to 2021 with application of linear and quantile regressions. Apart from that, t-test will be used to compare means of groups of Shariah-compliant and non-Shariah-compliant firms and IPOs under fixed-price and book-building mechanism.

Oversubscription is higher for IPOs issued through fixed-price method compared to book-building method, but no significant difference is found in oversubscription for Shariah firms compared to non-Shariah firms based on t-tests. The authors found IPO size, firm size, IPO risk, proportion of shares offered to public, and bank interest rate to have significant impact on the IPO demand. Some models found non-Shariah compliance status of IPO companies to be a significant factor for the investors to demand IPO. Quantile regression results found board independence to have a positive association with larger, less-subscribed firms and board size to have a negative relation with IPO demand, for smaller firms with high demand.

Future studies may apply the findings to other settings, especially into the reasons behind preference for non-Shariah-compliant firms and higher demand for IPOs during higher interest rate. Equity issuing firms and issue managers can benefit from this study by wisely deciding on the proportion of shares for public, issue size and board of director composition. Shariah considerations cannot be ignored given that more information on Shariah compliance is disseminated among investors despite current non-preference for Shariah-compliant IPOs. On the other hand, institutional investors and general investors should consider firm-specific, governance and macroeconomic factors in IPO investment. Likewise, regulators would do well to bring in quality IPOs with characteristics mentioned in this study for ensuring stability of the market.

The main contribution of the study is identifying determinants of IPO demand: faith, governance, macro issues – understanding whether one or many of the above factors drive investor demand in IPOs of a Muslim-majority country will be the main contribution.

Using the consumption values theory (CVT) as a baseline model, this study aims to evaluate the factors that influence farmers' decision-making behavior regarding interest-free agricultural financing products.

Data were gathered from 321 banking customers using questionnaires who are engaged with the agriculture sector and wish to obtain finance related to Islamic agriculture products.

The findings demonstrate that the decision behavior for Islamic agriculture financing products is highly influenced by epistemic, emotional and functional values. On the contrary, conditional and social values do not influence farmers’ choice behavior for Islamic agriculture financing products.

There are a few limitations in this study. Initially, the study's geographic scope is limited to bank customers within the agriculture sector who live, in particular, in Southern Sindh province, Pakistan. Next, researchers extended the CVT to a specific focus on agricultural financing products by Islamic banks. Future researchers should take these concerns into consideration for better applicability, and it is anticipated that the research approach will be refined to best expand the results. Lastly, future researchers are expected to broaden the theory's relevance by considering the socio-cultural environmental conditions (culture, religious values and approaches) and social conditions in a wider range of Islamic agricultural financial instruments.

The findings are beneficial for practitioners intending to advance innovative Islamic agriculture financing products to cater to Pakistani farmers’ needs.

This research extends the CVT that offers valuable information for the development of consumers’ behavior in the setting of interest-free agricultural financing.

This study aims to explore and analyze the issues in weightages-based profit distribution mechanism in Islamic banks from Shari’ah, practical and regulatory perspectives.

A qualitative research approach was used in this study based on primary data collected through semi-structured interviews from Shari’ah practitioners and senior industry experts in the field of pool management in the Islamic Financial Services Industry of Pakistan.

The current study found that the weightages-based mechanism conforms to the rules of Mudarabah and; therefore, permissible. However, the elements of exploitation, transparency and fairness require further research, as these elements seem to exist in this mechanism. It was also found that there are many loopholes in the regulatory guidelines for pool management in Islamic banking institutions (IBIs) in Pakistan resulting in practical issues.

The findings of this study may help improve pool management in IBIs, which in turn may cater the objections raised by academicians, customers and industry experts. Moreover, the alternative solution based on the findings of this study can be transformed into a proposal for regulators to take necessary actions against unfair profit distribution and issue further improved guidelines for IBIs in Pakistan.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, very limited studies have been conducted on pool management particularly with issues from different perspectives and alternative solutions have been suggested that may act as a proposal for IBIs as well as regulatory authorities.

The surge in pharmaceutical and health supplement usage among consumers aims to enhance personal well-being. This growing opportunity for pharmaceutical brands has resulted in increased market share and intensified industry competition. Using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this study aims to identify the factors influencing Malaysians’ choices regarding pharmaceutical and health supplements. In addition, the variable of past behaviour was incorporated to account for consumer decisions based on prior experiences.

Using purposive sampling, 300 questionnaires were gathered and analysed via Statistical Package for the Social Sciences and structural equation modelling technique via Analysis of Moment Structures software to validate the reliability of each variables and the postulated relationships within the research framework.

Results revealed a pronounced impact of past behaviour on the intention to consume pharmaceutical and health supplements. The mediating role of perceived behavioural control in bridging past behaviour and consumption intention was also ascertained. Notably, the findings support the inclusion of past behaviour in the TPB as a pivotal determinant of intention.

The insights gleaned underscore the escalating trend of pharmaceutical consumption in Malaysia, providing strategies to enhance and maintain the competitive edge and market position of pharmaceutical brands.