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This study investigates the influence of corporate income tax on two corporate financial decisions — dividend and capital structure policies, particularly for Shariah compliant companies in Malaysia.

The study considered data from a sample of 529 Malaysian listed companies from four industrial sectors from 2007–2021 (6,746 company-year observations, before eliminating outliers). Panel models such as Fixed Effect and Random effect models were used. The study specifically tested the effect of corporate income tax on dividend and capital structure policies for Shariah compliant companies (3,148 observations) and controlled for industrial sectors.

(1) Firms are mostly Shariah-compliant, less liquid, less profitable and smaller in size, (2) Broadly when analysed together, tax has no impact on debt-equity ratio while it has an impact on dividend per share, (3) However, when tested separately for Shariah compliant companies, the influence of effective tax on capital structure is very evident but not for dividend and (4) influence of industrial sector on the relationship between corporate tax and capital structure and dividend policy is significant. Results indicate that Shariah firms might be raising debt to gain tax advantage. Companies in general pay dividends to avoid reputational damage.

This study assumes that leverage and dividend policy decisions are the main outcomes of the changing tax policies, while it seems that there could be other important outcomes that can be tested in future research. The study also shows the changing tax regimes of different ASEAN countries but they have not been tested to see the differences between countries. It will be indeed interesting for future researchers to focus on this aspect.

The findings contribute to the literature on tax planning of the Shariah-compliant firms, a high growth business segment in the Asian context. The study discussed potential tax-based Islamic market product development.

The purpose of this study is to examine the quality of reported earnings in the corporate reports of Shariah-compliant companies listed on Bursa Malaysia.

This study hypothesises that companies with Shariah compliance status have higher quality of earnings because of greater demand for and supply of high-quality financial reports. The quality of reported earnings is measured using the cross-sectional Dechow and Dichev (2002) accrual quality model. The study uses a balanced panel data of 3,048 observations from 508 companies during a six-year period of 2003-2008.

This paper finds robust evidence that Shariah-compliant companies have significantly higher earnings quality compared to other firms. The results provide support for the arguments that Shariah-compliant companies supply a higher quality of reported earnings to attract foreign investment, have greater demand for high-quality financial reporting because of their Shariah status and are subject to greater scrutiny by regulators and institutional investors.

This study contributes to the existing literature on Islamic capital market, business ethics, firms’ governance and financial reporting quality. The study would give a better understanding on issues relating to earnings quality of Shariah-compliant companies and would be especially useful for financial statement users, including investment analysts.

This paper provides evidence on the quality of earnings in Shariah-compliant companies and offers new arguments that explain why such companies possess higher quality of earnings compared to their counterparts.

One important study in the portfolio investment is the study of the optimal asset allocations. Markowitz is the pioneer of modern portfolio theory that analyses the performance of portfolio based on the mean (reward) and variance (risk). Motivated by the Markowitz's mean variance model, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new portfolio optimization model that takes into consideration both processes of purification and screening, which are key to constructing a Shariah-compliant portfolio. In practice, this paper introduces a stochastic purification variable and a probabilistic screening constraint into a portfolio model.

First, the authors study the stochastic nature of purification variable and apply it to both investment and dividend purification. Second, recognizing that the importance of on-going screening could adversely affect the portfolio strategy, the authors impose probabilistic constraints to control the risk of compliance change. They evaluate the proposed model by formulating the screening constraints at both asset and portfolio levels, together with three different financial screening divisors that are broadly used by the international Shariah boards. The authors also conduct an extensive empirical study using a sample of Shariah-compliant public companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange.

Based on the empirical example presented in this paper, the authors found that the purification variable in the proposed model is closer to the practice in the Sharia capital market in terms of the nature of the non-constant data, and this variable reduces the total income of portfolio which has not been captured in the previous literature. The authors also have successfully derived the portfolio screening constraint to mitigate the risk of the asset change to be non-compliant in the future.

Based on the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that proposed the stochastic purification and the dynamic of screening processes into the Shariah portfolio model. This paper also examines the impact of non-short-selling, purification and screening policies to the performance of Shariah portfolio.

The purpose of this study is to measure the extent of voluntary disclosure in the 2009 annual reports of 108 Shariah‐compliant companies listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange. The study aims to investigate three categories of voluntary disclosure: overall, conventional and Islamic disclosure.

Voluntary disclosure was measured using a self‐constructed index consisting of 132 items overall, 86 for conventional and 46 for Islamic information items. Annual reports were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t‐tests.

Results suggest that the mean overall voluntary disclosure by Shariah‐compliant companies is 15 percent, but 17 percent and 13 percent for the conventional and Islamic items, respectively. Voluntary disclosure of conventional items is comparable to extant studies, and higher than Islamic items.

The study uses annual reports from 2009 because they were the most recent data available on the listed companies at the beginning of the study. Since this study was undertaken before the Shariah Advisory Council of the Capital Market Authority was established on January 1, 2012, this imposes a limitation. Future study should replicate this study to assess differences with the existence of the Council.

The findings provide evidence that Shariah‐complaint companies lack voluntary disclosure, especially Islamic disclosure information. As a result, the findings should be useful to lawmakers in Kuwait for improving overall disclosure practices by Shariah‐compliant companies. Preparers may use the findings to match the amount of information in their annual reports with other companies to ensure capital sourcing. Investors may use the findings for understanding disclosure behavior of Shariah‐compliant companies in Kuwait. Such findings may assist them to diversify investment portfolios.

This study contributes to extending the Kuwaiti literature on disclosure, and fills a gap in empirical studies on Shariah‐compliant disclosure practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the shariah-compliant status of the firms negatively influences their use of foreign exchange hedging instruments.

This paper uses a logit panel regression on 350 firm-year observations from 70 nonfinancial listed firms over the period from 2010 to 2014. Shariah-compliant companies account for about 84 per cent of the sample firms.

Preliminarily, the results show that none of the samples of the shariah-compliant firms report any use of Islamic hedging instrument, either in the form of wa’d or tawarruq. The results of the study’s logit panel regression contradict the authors’ prediction that the shariah-compliant status negatively influences firms’ decision to hedge. In contrast, shariah-compliant companies are twice as likely as their conventional counterparts in adopting forex hedging.

This study is limited to information disclosed in the items 31, 36 and 37 of financial management policies in the annual report. However, given that shariah-compliant firms must abide by the limit of 5 per cent profits before tax from clearly prohibited activities (including riba’), the need for exclusive disclosure on the adoption of Islamic or conventional hedging appears to be imperative for the viability of the Malaysian Islamic capital market.

In evaluating the shariah compliance of a company, investors (individual or institutional) must look further than just interest-based riba’ in mixed-business companies to ensure that they comply with the 5 per cent maximum requirement on the non-halal business contribution to profit. This is because the finding of this study indicates that shariah-compliant companies are twice as likely to adopt forex hedging, when none of them reports the use of Islamic hedging tools. Investors must therefore give ample allowance to riba’ that can be induced through the use of conventional forex hedging instruments. This is until the security market regulator imposes a requirement on shariah-compliant companies an explicit disclosure of the use of Islamic versus conventional hedging tools, as they had done in the case of Islamic versus conventional debt instruments.

Muslim and socially responsible investors rely on the Shariah-compliant status of the company in ensuring that their wealth grows according to the Shariah principles. To sustain and develop the Islamic capital market which the firms have been relying on for external capital, Shariah-compliant firms and the authority awarding the status are equally responsible for honoring the trust that these investors by ensuring the permissibility (halal) of the business and the conduct of their business.

Conventional forex hedging instruments are criticized for violating as-sarf, a shariah principle, which requires the exchanges of particular assets (gold, silver and currency) to be delivered on the spot, and thereby infusing riba’ al-fadhl. Although Islamic (wa’d- or tawarruq-based) hedging instruments are widely available by Islamic banks in this country since they were introduced by Bank Negara Malaysia in 2010, paradoxically, the authors’ observation indicates that none of the studied firms reports the adoption of these instruments in their annual reports.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Shariah compliant real estate development financing and investment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

In this paper, the authors employed desk research and survey to examine issues relating to Shariah compliant real estate development financing and investment. Following the desk research, 18 in‐depth interviews were conducted with senior executives of banks, real estate developers and consultants.

Equity Shariah instruments are found to be in high demand by real estate investors, however they are rarely offered by Islamic banks. In addition, the survey results confirm that Islamic financiers tend to partner real estate companies through land acquisition to post construction, contrary to how conventional financiers operate, therefore reducing moral hazard issues.

As Shariah compliant real estate research and knowledge is limited, the authors faced a challenge in getting respondents who are familiar and willing to participate in the interview. Nevertheless, the 18 respondents gave adequate inputs to enable the authors to write the research paper.

The paper includes challenges and implications for the future developments of Shariah compliant real estate development financing and investment.

This paper provides the Shariah compliant perspective of real estate development financing and investment, where the current knowledge is very limited.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference between the determinants of cash holdings of Shariah-compliant and non-Shariah-compliant firms, for non-financial corporations in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The data include all non-financial firms listed in six GCC markets over a period 2005–2019. The IdealRatings database is used to identify Shariah-compliant firms in the GCC. To examine the determinants of cash holdings, a static model is used. To confirm the applicability of the method applied, the Breusch–Pagan Lagrange Multiplier (LM) and Hausman (1978) are used to choose the most efficient and consistent static panel regression.

The results show that, for Shariah-compliant firms, the relevant determinants of cash holdings are leverage, profitability, capital expenditure, net working capital and operating cash flow. For non-Shariah-compliant firms, the only relevant determinants of cash holdings are leverage, net working capital and operating cash flow. The findings suggest that the cash holding decisions of Shariah-compliant firms can be best explained using the pecking order theory. This reveals that Shariah-compliant firms use liquid assets as their first financing option, due to the Shariah regulations.

Future studies may investigate the optimal levels of cash holdings and compare the adjustment speeds toward target cash holdings of both the Shariah-compliant firms and their conventional counterparts.

This study is the first to investigate the difference between the determinants of cash holdings of Shariah-compliant and non-Shariah-compliant firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of Shariah-compliant status on oversubscription of initial public offerings (IPOs) in Malaysia. It is believed that the Shariah-compliant status serves as a platform that sends a credible signal to investors which could possibly explain the IPO oversubscription anomaly.

This study used a multivariate and quantile regression model which involved 252 IPOs listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2005 to 2015.

The results show a significant positive relationship between Shariah-compliant status and oversubscription ratio, which suggests that companies with Shariah status could draw the attention of the investors. Strict guidelines and permissible elements of Shariah-compliant are considered agreeable and amicable by the investors.

Future studies should look into financial ratio benchmark (cash and debt) for determining Shariah-compliant status to enhance the understanding of oversubscription of IPOs in Malaysia.

This study offers practical understanding to the issuers and underwriters on the factors that should be considered in assuring a good early performance of their issuance. Therefore, it will benefit the issuers and underwriters in managing and planning the IPO process carefully.

The results of this study provide a new insight for investors regarding important information found in the prospectus when making the decisions to subscribe to IPOs.

This paper is one of the first to provide an empirical evidence of the impact of Shariah-compliant status on oversubscription in the IPO market.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between Shariah compliance and corporate capital structure decisions. This study explores the variation of capital structure speed of adjustment.

The authors’ sample includes a sample of the largest 200 nonfinancial firms trading in the Malaysian and Pakistan stock markets. This study uses ordinary least squares and dynamic two-step system generalized method of moments to test the hypotheses of the study.

The results show that Shariah-compliant firms use a lower level of leverage than the noncomplaint firms. Moreover, while both types of firms have optimal capital structures, the speed of adjustment toward the targets is slower for Shariah-complaint firms than non-Shariah-compliant firms. This variation can be seen through the different levels of market imperfection experienced by the two types of firms. Shariah-compliant firms follow Islamic rules that restrict the type and degree of leverage, thus affecting the availability of external funding to Shariah-compliant firms.

The findings call for more development and innovation of financing instruments that comply with Shariah rules that will increase of supply of external funds for Shariah-compliant firms and, thus, reduce market imperfections that are faced by Shariah-compliant firms.

The study contributes to the limited number of studies that examine the nexus between conventional corporate theories and Islamic corporate finance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the informational value of Shariah-compliant disclosure in the Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs) prospectus and whether Shariah-compliant status has an impact on the IPO initial return when adopted as a signalling mechanism.

It uses data from 320 IPOs for Shariah-compliant companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia between 2004 and 2013.

It finds that the degree of IPO underpricing for Shariah-compliant companies is 19.97 per cent with investors earning significant returns on the first trading day. For the effect of different factors on the degree of IPO, we find that the size and type of IPO offers have a significant impact on the degree of IPO underpricing. Other economic confidence factor models fail to yield economically plausible parameter values.

The study contributes to the literature in a number of ways. It is the first to evaluate the effect of Shariah-compliance status regulation in Malaysian market, hence it provides an insight into the effectiveness of such regulation. Second, while the existing Shariah-compliant IPO studies in the same market focus on Shariah status at the date of the studies being conducted, this study uses the information around IPO time. The information that investors receive around IPO time may influence investors’ decision and valuation of the IPOs in the aftermarket. Specifically, this study is different from the previous research, as it investigates whether Shariah-compliant companies would change the average degree of IPO underpricing for companies listed on Bursa Malaysia.