EIIB expands banking team

European Islamic Investment Bank, the first Shariah compliant Islamic investment bank to operate in the UK, has hired five bankers to its treasury and capital markets team in London.

Tom Toolis has been appointed senior dealer covering foreign exchange and money markets. He joins from the Islamic Bank of Britain where he was chief dealer, and before that worked at the London branch of Banca Intesa.

Doug Bitcon joins as senior dealer, debt capital markets, from South Africa's Absa Bank. He has worked across a range of investment grade and emerging markets credit products including bonds, floating rate bonds, credit default swaps and structured products.

Also joining from Absa Bank is Andy Graham as senior manager of structured products. At Absa he was most recently a risk manager, and before that worked on the bank's trading desk dealing FX, interest rate and fixed-income products.

In addition, Kazi Hussain has been made manager of structured trade finance. He joins from The Islamic Development Bank Group, which is based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Before that he worked in risk management and corporate finance at the Commonwealth Development Corporation.

Finally, Anouar Cedrati has been appointed as manager, structured finance. Cedrati has been recruited from rating agency Standard & Poor's where he was an analysts in London covering financial institutions operating in the Middle East and North Africa.

John Weguelin, managing director, EIIB, said the appointments had been a made as part its plan to continue grow its treasury and capital markets business. He added that bank was active in the Sukuk, primary and secondary debt markets and in Islamic trade finance too.

Danie Marx, head of treasury and capital markets, said the bank was planning to expand its debt products coverage to include structured products.