British Islamic bank Gatehouse expects to turn in a profit next year and will become more aggressive in its pursuit of deals, the group's new chief executive told Reuters in an interview. Richard Thomas - the bank's head after its Kuwaiti owner The Securities House KSCC merged it with its other London unit, the Global Securities House (UK) - said he wanted to move away from a boutique strategy.
"It is actually very likely, certainly on an operational basis, that we would be profitable from early 2010, slightly earlier then expected," Thomas said. The Securities House set the bank up in 2007 to access clients interested in sharia-compliant products from London. But last month, it said it would merge the bank with its other London unit, saying the two business models were overlapping.
The rejig also prompted the departure of Gatehouse Bank boss David Testa and the appointment of Thomas, who was chairman of Gatehouse and also headed GSH (UK). "We are not in the business of doing one benchmark transaction every five years," Thomas said.
"The change of focus will be to do regular and repeatable business in different sectors." The UK hosts five stand-alone Islamic banks, which are gradually launching investment and saving products as well as corporate services. The Bank of London and the Middle East, the largest, in January provided a 10 million pounds ($16.55 million) leasing facility to online grocer Ocado. Like other financial sectors, Islamic finance was hit by the credit crisis despite the fact that it largely shunned complex financial derivatives and its banks are generally wary of taking too much debt onto their balance sheets.
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