62 April 2016 www.bahrainthismonth.com Malik describes himself as an econometrician – a type of economist who integrates statistics and mathematics into economic analysis. In layman’s terms, they’re the people who look at a whole spectrum of figures and then do the number crunching to work out, for example, how much insurance we pay. It’s a calling that has served him well over the years, allowing him to spot investment opportunities and growth where others might have missed the boat. The Lebanese Australian first came to the Middle East several decades ago as business had him shuttling across the world and a stopover in Bahrain in the early 1990s led to a fortuitous meeting with Abdulla Ahmed Nass, of the Nass Group and Corporation. “We clicked immediately,” says Malik. “There was a very good affinity there and he was my partner until he passed away.” At the time, among other businesses, Malik was raising livestock on land in Sudan. In partnership with Abdulla he began exporting sheep to Saudi Arabia and cattle to Bahrain using Australian farming technologies and his own genius for figures. He says: “Abdulla was interested in what I was doing and we formed the Livestock and Agriculture Development Corporation (LADCO) with production in Sudan and headquarters here in Bahrain. Because of supplying the cattle I came up with the idea of using waste to produce fertiliser and Bahrain Organic Products was formed with Nass Group in 1997.” The company remains Bahrain’s only manufacturer of organic fertilisers for landscaping and agriculture, though Malik is no longer involved. Meanwhile, he was turning his talents to the area of meetings and exhibitions, working with Amsterdam RAI, and property investment in Australia which led him, eventually, to involvement with Australia’s well-established home owners associations and Body Corporate Services (BCS), an entity which manages shared properties. Seeing an opportunity in the Middle East, Malik set up BCS Bahrain forming a joint venture with Nass to establish strata-model property management in which common areas of a joint building, such as parking, insurance and cleaning, are looked after by just one entity. He says: “If you are living or investing in a shared property, it makes sense to have a Home Owners’ Association. Some developers are not keen to have that established but they give owners a way of making sure their interests are properly managed. If nobody takes responsibility for your common areas and maintenance, the building can, in the worst case, fall into disrepair. BCS is a company that can take on that management role and it’s something that is, finally, becoming more common here in the Middle East and particularly in Bahrain where I am working with several developments.” His involvement in the property world and partnership in a financial consultancy in the Gulf led him to establish Iskan Finance in 2001. It has gone on to become one of Australia’s leading Sharia-compliant finance companies INTERVIEWS ALSO THIS MONTH: 65 IT’S GOOD TO TALK 68 A MODERN DAY GURU OPENING UP ISLAMIC INVESTMENT LIZ O’REILLY Malik Helweh brought the World Trade Centre brand to Bahrain and established broad spectrum Islamic finance in Australia. Now he is planning an investment app that will allow Muslims across the world to access Sharia-compliant opportunities at the click of a mouse. Malik Helweh
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