Islamic Finance Daily Brief — Monday, November 2, 2026

What to learn: This is a new development on a story covered in the Oct 18 edition and the Oct 30 edition. The original breach was a covenant requiring founder Wong Thean Soon to remain the company's single largest shareholder, and the October 30 confirmation that a dissolution event had been triggered. A credit rating is an agency's public judgement of how likely a borrower is to repay. The rating scale runs from high grades down to C, and then D, which means payment default. Zetrix has now moved two steps down that ladder in about two weeks. The first cut, from AA-IS to BB+IS on October 16, moved it from a strong grade to a weak one. The second cut, from BB+IS to CIS, moves it to the last grade before default. The reasons MARC gives are threefold. The covenant breach is still not remedied and no waiver has been agreed with sukukholders, so the programme remains exposed to an event of default being declared. Liquidity pressure is rising, with a RM314 million (roughly $77 million) government claim over unremitted road transport collections and a RM353.1 million (roughly $87 million) additional tax assessment on a subsidiary, which the company has appealed. Governance oversight is missing, because the company has yet to appoint new external auditors and all three members of its audit committee have resigned. The people who run the process now are the rating agency, which judges the risk, the trustee and the sukukholders, who hold the rights under the triggered terms, and the company, which must find a remedy or a waiver. MARC states clearly that a dissolution event does not by itself require immediate full repayment, and a downgrade to DIS would follow only if Zetrix fails to pay an amount due on time. The change for a sukukholder is a waiting position with a sharper warning attached. Scheduled payments continue, but the agency now judges non-repayment as highly likely, and the next development to watch is a waiver, a cure plan, new auditors, or a missed payment. In the USA, a bondholder in the same position watches the same kind of ladder, with a rating agency cutting the bond toward default while the trustee waits for a payment failure or a holder vote.

🔗 Source: MARC Ratings

What to learn: A money market fund is a pool that takes cash from many investors and invests it in short-term, low-risk instruments, so the cash keeps earning while it stays available to withdraw. The Shariah-compliant version cannot use interest-bearing deposits or conventional bonds. This fund invests instead in sukuk, Murabaha placements, Wakala placements, call accounts, and commercial papers that meet Shariah rules, across Oman, the Gulf, and international markets. The fund is managed by Bank Muscat's asset management team, with Shariah governance from Meethaq Islamic Banking through an independent Shariah Supervisory Board. The mechanics are simple for an ordinary investor. The investor buys units at a published daily value, the fund invests the pooled cash, and the investor can sell units back any day, with no fee on buying or selling and no minimum holding period. The minimum of RO100, roughly $260, puts the fund within reach of an ordinary investor parking surplus cash, rather than only large institutions. The change for that investor is a place to keep short-term cash that earns a return without interest and without locking the money away. In the USA, an ordinary investor in the same position uses a conventional money market fund, which earns interest and is therefore not Shariah-compliant. A US investor who wants a Shariah-compliant place for short-term cash looks instead to sukuk funds or Islamic bank accounts, since no US money market fund follows these rules.

🔗 Source: Bank Muscat