A recent meeting between bankers from Italy and the Gulf was organized in an effort to build stronger ties, and included efforts to build Italy’s first Islamic bank later this year. The new venture could be part of the European Islamic Investment bank, headquartered in London. While it is expected that the initial customers would be entirely Muslim, the client base has hopes to expand to non-Muslims. Adnan Yousif, chairman of Arab banks, set an initial price of the institution at $147 million.
