It is a far cry from the glass skyscrapers, oil wealth and searing heat of Dubai. But the University of Reading, on a campus complete with rugby pitches and redbrick buildings in southern England, is hoping to establish itself as a teaching centre for Islamic finance.
Last year the university launched a master’s degree in investment banking and Islamic finance, making it one of a growing number of universities in the west to offer a postgraduate course in a sector that has boomed in the Muslim world in recent years. One of the sector’s greatest challenges is finding enough specialist bankers to meet that growth.
“We think Islamic finance is enormously short of people and is now prominent enough to be considered a semi-permanent part of the banking scene. So we need to address it,” says John Board, director of Reading’s International Capital Markets Association centre, which offers the programme.
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