The Chancellor Guide to the Legal and Shari'a Aspects of Islamic Finance Authors

Chapter 4: Trade Finance and Other Murabahah Based Financing Methods

By Stella Cox and Shana Sadiq

Shana Sadiq:
Allen & Overy LLP, London

Shana Sadiq is an associate in the Project Finance Group with Allen & Overy LLP, working out of the firm’s New York office, and a member of the firm’s Finance Practice Group.

Prior to joining Allen & Overy LLP, Ms. Sadiq was an associate for King & Spalding and an associate in the finance practice of a magic circle law firm in London, England where she represented clients on project finance, acquisition finance and Islamic finance transactions.

Ms. Sadiq received a joint honors degree in Law from Durham University in England, and a Masters in Japan's LNG market from Columbia University in New York. She also holds a doctorate from Tokyo University in the commercial operation of electric utilities in South Asia and is the recipient of the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho) scholarship.

Ms. Sadiq is admitted to practice law in the State of New York, is fluent in spoken Urdu/Hindi, and is conversational in Japanese.

Stella Cox:
Managing Director

Stella Cox is a Managing Director with the Dawnay, Day Group where she and her team are currently responsible for the firm’s Middle Eastern relationships and, particularly, for transactions that DDCAP enters into with and on behalf of its Islamic clients.

Previously she was a Director of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson Limited where she had responsibility for Middle Eastern institutional relationships and product development for the bank’s Islamic clients. Stella's team managed assets totally more than US$2bn, and extended over US$250m in finance to support the trade and commodity purchase requirements of their clients.

Whilst with the bank, Stella was involved in structuring The Islamic Fund, the first Shari’a-compliant global equity product. The Fund was subsequently distributed by Gulf Bank, Kuwait and National Bank of Bahrain.

Stella is a member of the Islamic Financial Services Board Task Force on Markets and Instruments for Shari’a Compliant Liquidity Management, and a past member of the Board of Governors of the UK Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance. She is a non Executive Director of several financial institutions in the Middle East.