Jordan's economy was shielded from the worst of the global financial crisis. However, despite this stability, its deposit-rich banks are struggling to ignite the country's lending markets.

From Hong Kong to London, established global financial centres are looking to reinvent themselves as Islamic finance hubs and capture a slice of a fast-growing and still largely untapped market.

A banker dealing with a phone enquiry at National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, which tops The Banker's Arab banks ranking this year.

The Bank of Israel's authority to regulate the country's banking sector is something that other supervisors can only dream of, and the benefits of it holding such power were seen during the credit crisis. Writer Philip Alexander

The UN sanctions that are restricting the activity of Iran's banking sector may be tough, but they are not stopping those determined to do business. Writer Spencer Anderson

The capital markets were deemed too fragile to issue a riyal-denominated Islamic bond to help fund Satorp's greenfield refining project in Saudi Arabia, but that doesn't mean this type of asset funding has gone away. Project sukuk are becoming well known in the Middle East as Islamic finance-friendly products. Writer James Gavin

With its seven-year maturity making it the longest for any sukuk drawn up by a Saudi corporate, the $1.9bn capital raising put together for the Saudi Electric Company marks a huge achievement for the HSBC Saudi Arabia team that assembled it. Writer Edward Russell-Walling