TOPICS
Islamic Finance
Monetary Policy
Capital Markets
LANGUAGES SPOKEN
English
Armen Papazian
Armen V. Papazian earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, UK, specializing in Financial Economics. His fields of specialization are Capital Markets, Islamic Finance, and Monetary and Fiscal Policy. He is currently a Fellow of Judge Business School , University of Cambridge
Until December 2009 Dr. Papazian was the Head of Islamic finance at UBS Investment bank with a global and cross - business mandate to lead the Islamic Finance business of the bank. He has taken part in the 1.93 Billion USD Dubai government sukuk issued in October 2009, restructured the Islamic operations of the bank, and invented a number of new sukuk structures.
During his previous position at the DIFX (Nasdaq Dubai), Dr. Papazian has been a key strategy developer as a Senior Vice President, leading the market development efforts of the exchange. Dr. Papazianhas led the launch of the first Islamic and conventional structured products platform in the region with Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch; the region’s first bond and Sukuk indices with HSBC; a new FTSE DIFX UAE 20 Index; the first UAE IPO, and the first fungible dual listing of a US company on the exchange. He has played a crucial role in building the 49/51 UAE company compliance mechanism at DIFX, and has also prepared the ground for listing Commodity ETFs, REITS and Funds.
Dr. Papazian has also been involved in broad industry discussions and policy making through a number of Interviews, keynote speeches and paper presentations in the UAE and abroad. He has published extensively on the GCC monetary architecture, and has made unique contributions to the Islamic Finance field. His key contributions have been a standardization model for Sukuk, and the novel concept of Islamic money creation.