White & Case reports that:

"As a matter of fact, according to a recent study by the International Monetary Fund there are now more than 300 Islamic finance institutions worldwide - compared with only one in 1975 - with assets estimated at more than $250 billion. These assets are estimated to be growing at more than 15 percent annually."

In addition to the rise of Islamic funding institutions, discussions among senior legal advisors and business people at the last meeting of the General Counsels' Roundtable suggest that there are also a considerable number of new Chinese investors, who are focused particularly on infrastructure development and resource extraction in Africa.

However, apart from the IMF study, we are not aware of other studies that analyze this trend, or that systematically map-out the origins and rise of these so-called "new players" in emerging markets' infrastructure.

Posted by rjorr at March 30, 2006 5:57 PM