This has to be a harbinger of things to come. The story is worth clicking through to as it describes the sale of Aston Martin to a group that involved some Kuwaitis. The deal had to be structured to reflect the interest of the Kuwaitis and to conform to Islamic finance principles.

The story goes on to note RBC and BMO have hired experts, and plan to expand their offerrings in this area.

Canadian Banks & Insurance

In February, Royal Bank of Canada hired Zaher Barakat, who teaches Islamic banking and finance at Cass Business School in London, as head of financial products for the Middle East.

RBC is targeting a variety of clients in the region, including sovereign wealth funds, private banking arms of local banks and government pension funds. While the priority is to market the bank’s existing services and products into the Middle East, RBC is planning to enter the Islamic finance market, Mr. Barakat said. “We are working now on one fund to transform it to be sharia-compliant,” he said.

Bank of Montreal, through its London institutional management group Pyrford International, manages sharia-compliant products for Middle Eastern clients and is expanding the offering, said BMO spokesman Paul Gammal.
….

Walied Soliman, a Toronto-based lawyer at Ogilvy Renault, said
“Canadian banks haven’t been as quick either on raising money from the
Middle East for financial institutions in Canada or in terms of
offering up structured products or issuers for investment in the Middle
East.”

But that may be changing, he said. “Canada is very
quickly getting onto the radar of [sharia] investors and other issuers
looking to engage in M&A transactions with Canadian issuers, and as
a result we’re going to see growing interest in Canada and the bankers
will adapt to that and learn more about the sector as the demand grows.”