Transparency requires me to record, in this genealogy, that one of the founding Houses of the Accepting Houses Committee back in 1914 was Cunliffe Bros, whose founder was actually Governor of the Bank of England at the time. Transparency however also requires me to make clear that he was no relation. I do, however, feel a little sense of eponymous history in speaking here tonight. Financial markets of course have changed greatly since Cunliffe Bros, with half a million pounds of capital, was a force in the City. I want to look today briefly at how financial markets have grown worldwide, why they are subject to strong pressures to cluster activities in key centres and how this has affected the concentration of financial services in the UK – or as it is often, and misleadingly described, in London. 2  I also want to touch on two of the fundamental challenges faced by financial markets and the institutions that support them – maintaining, or some would say, restoring their ‘social license’ and managing systemic risk. And finally, given that this is the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, I will touch briefly on one or two possible implications for European capital markets of the UK’s exit from the European Union. In passing, I will say a little about how the Bank sees these issues. Our role and responsibilities have evolved as markets have evolved.
The issue, amidst the challenging global financial markets, was highly successful, attracting significant interest from a wide investor base with Asia accounting for 60 percent of the issue. The combined size of the Petronas global sukuk and conventional bond issuances amounting to 4.5 billion US dollars is the largest global issuance in Asia (excluding Japan) for the year. The brief time-to-market for the issuance of the US dollar Petronas sukuk and bond took approximately one month, from structuring the instrument and date of submission to the authorities, to book building and the issuance date – reflecting the efficiency of the Malaysian market. Prior to this, Malaysia has also seen wide ranging ringgit-denominated issuances by nonresident issuers. Multi-nationals, foreign corporations and Multilateral agencies such as the International Finance Corporation, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Islamic Development Bank have successfully issued sukuk in Malaysia. All these issuances garnered overwhelming response from resident and non-resident investors as reflected by the oversubscription of these sukuk issuances. The liquidity and tradability of these ringgit issuances have been supported by the diverse range of players in the domestic Islamic financial system and the increasing demand from foreign investors. The establishment of CMH marks a further milestone in the development of the Islamic financial system under the MIFC initiative, sustaining the continued evolution and the development of Islamic finance.