In the beginning of the conference Dr. Ali Salehabadi, chairman of the Iranian Association of Islamic Finance, welcomed the participants and gave a short explanation regarding the association’s measures.

Lecture by Prof.Dr. Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam
Dr. Mesbahi Moghadam, President of jurisprudential committee of the Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO), stated economic policies must be drawn up in the long-term in the capital market so that the companies listed on the stock exchange have decision-making power for upcoming events. He went on to say that if some companies don’t have access to the long-run policies, they can’t make a decision about investment.

Lecture by Dr.Hassan Ghalibaf
Dr.Ghalibaf,Ex-president of the Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO), emphasized that performance of applied tools in the capital market after being used is also discussed again in the jurisprudential committee of the SEO to evaluate its feedback and results in implementation.
He pointed out that good governance in the capital market is an issue that needs to be addressed again, and in fact, without a good governance system, the role of the capital market in allocating resources will not be seen as it should be.
The lecturer said good governance in the capital market consists of some major components: law governance in the capital market, Shariah governance in the capital market and corporate governance.

Lecture by Dr. Seyyed Ali Hosseini
Dr. Hosseini,Board member of the Iranian Association of Islamic Finance and Chairman of Samat Co.’s board of directors, mentioned that economic growth and development of any country owes its production capacity and considered capital as one of the most important factors of production.
He added the capital market has the ability to provide this capital in a large volume and low cost. Therefore, in order to attract these resources, the protection of investors' rights must be considered.
Somewhere else the lecturer said that one of the important strategies in protecting the shareholders’ rights is to encourage the increase of liquidity.

Lecture by Prof.Dr. Fereydoun Rahnamay Roodposhti
Dr.Rahnamay, Faculty member of Azad University and President of the Financial Engineering Association, mentioned corporate leadership is as one of the components of good governance and considered its instructions as a result of the events occurred in international financial markets.
He added the corporate leadership system is considered from two aspects: first, intra-organizational systems, namely tools contrived in business and the second, extra-organizational systems that operate outside environment such as governance or regulatory bodies. All of these are effective in designing a corporate leadership system.

Lecture by Mr.Hossein Fahimi
Mr.Fahimi,CEO of Central Securities Depository and Settlement Co., examined the personality and legal nature of shareholders from the perspective of Islamic law, going on to say that regarding legal identity, there are four theories: privilege, real, legal and credit. A person’s legal personality is built by them and can enter society in the form of company and shareholder.

Lecture by Dr. Shapour Mohammadi
Dr. Mohammadi, Head of the Monetary and Banking Research Institute and Ex-president of the Securities and Exchange Organization, defined the shareholder, owner, ownership and company from legal and financial perspectives saying according to a definition, the shareholder is the owner of the shares and jointly owns the company. However, the company as a legal entity is different from its assets.
He emphasized that shareholders do not have the right to change the company's assets individually, but they can manage the assets through intermediaries and the board of directors.

Lecture by Dr. Majid Rezaei
Dr. Rezaei, Member of jurisprudential committee of SEO, stressed that some companies’ main assets are cash and cash is not something inherently to be profitable, but it should be used in a way to create profit. He stated according to the interpretation and analysis of the jurisprudential committee, which is also supported by legal opinions, it is necessary to include companies in the field of lease that have a lot of physical assets.
He pointed out that in the stock market, everything must be transparent and the benefits must be passed on to investors. Also, the financial value of the benefits can be considered the same as the companies' net profit or EPS, and of course, the companies say how much of their profit is distributed among the shareholders.

Lecture by Dr. Gholam Ali Mirzaei Monfared
Dr. Monfared, Faculty member and Ex- secretary of the Jury of SEO, said that in order to identify the effects that shares have, one must know their jurisprudential and legal nature. The nature of shares must be examined from jurisprudential, legal, economic and accounting aspects.

International panel: The issue of Good Governance and its Impact on the Financial Market

Lecture by Dr. Mohammad Akram Laldin
Dr. Laldin, Director of International Shari'ah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA) in Malaysia, mentioned that the philosophy of corporate governance is to meet the demands of the organization owners.
Referring to corporate governance in Islamic financial institutions, he said that in general, the components of corporate governance in organizations include rules of conduct, accuracy, communication, internal control, monitoring and law enforcement, and certainly in any organization there are some roles such as board of directors, legislators, various committees and management team, while in Islamic financial institutions, in addition to all the foregoing cases, there are two other bodies, namely Shariah Supervisory Board and the Internal Sharia Unit.
The nature of these two organs is to ensure the fully compliance of the organization’s activities with the Sharia standards.

Lecture by Dr. Yusuf Dinç
Dr. Dinç, Associate Professor of İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University and one of the directors of Al Baraka Islamic Bank in Turkey, presented one of his recent studies with regard to methodologies for the product development process of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) in secular economies and Fiqh arbitrage.
He stated that IFRs are increasingly important actors in the financial markets and have had a significant area of research in recent years not only in Islamic countries but in non-Islamic countries such as Europe, USA, Canada, Russia and even African countries.
Meanwhile, Iran is benefiting from a fully Sharia-compliant financial system. But challenges of developing and implementing new financial products under secular jurisdiction remain an unexamined field.
In his study he tried to answer to the following questions:
1. What can be a possible conversion modeling for IFIs?
2. What can be a possible new product development modeling for IFIs?
3. What is the role of Shariah boards in product development process in IFIs?
Before going to the main presentation, Dr. Dinç added IFIs are somehow enjoying the lack of regulation (Fiqh arbitrage) in secular jurisdiction referring to “Maslahah”.
Then he mentioned there are 2 approaches for countries when they go towards Islamic finance product development, the first approach is increasing the market share like Malaysia and the Persian Gulf countries. The second one is Sharia compliance like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Nigeria and Sudan.
He said there are several studies examining the relation between Sharia compliance and market performance. The results are various from positive correlation to neutral correlation, but it can be totally concluded that development of new Islamic products has a positive relation with Market performance. He pointed out that there are 3 types of products in IFIs: Converted products such as debit cards, business model innovation such as credit cards, and new products like Sukuks.

Lecture by Dr.  Abbas Jalil
Dr. Ja;il, , CEO of Amanah Group in Malaysia, said ‘we believe that ethical aspects should be observed in good corporate governance”, emphasizing social issues in good governance not to be neglected in the shadow of transparency and other criteria, since the basic principle of Islam, as he sees, is the fairness of everything.
Another related issue is the easy way to raise funds according to Islamic finance ,so responsible authorities should look at the intention of the Islamic products because they have been observed literally but some entities may try to do some maneuver to make people unsure whether this thing is really fair, Islamic, ethical Sharia complaint or not.
In conclusion, Jalil stated that we have to make sure that Islamic finance is fairer and better than the conventional finance, in order to achieve this goal governments may need to exercise their enforcement powers in critical situations like a global pandemic.

Lecture by Dr. Saeed Homayoun
Dr. Homayoun, Faculty member of Gävle University, Sweden, gave his speech about recently released S&P500 Shariah compliant index for adopting companies for IPO. S&P500 released a guideline for Sharia Advisory Committees in line with corporate governance and business ethics.
This guideline focuses on the other aspects of investigating a company for listing and IPO. At present, Sharia Boards and Sharia Advisory Committees are just investigating companies’ financial position and going concern status, while there are other aspects such as governance in business ethics, social responsibility and environmental care. There are also no criteria or categorized items for these topics. S&P500 guideline has highlighted ESG factors and has classified criteria. It has also suggested Sharia Advisory Committees to specify mandatory and voluntary requirements. For the next step, companies should be ranked according to the level of their compliance with voluntary requirements.
There is no doubt that authorities in Sharia Boards and Sharia Advisory Committees are investors’ representatives to protect their rights. Hence, adopting precise and comprehensive criteria mitigates downside risks.

It is worth mentioning that late Prof.Dr.  Mousavian’s services to the Iranian Association of Islamic Finance were commemorated and Dr. Hossein Ghazavi was selected as the best instructor of DBA courses in Islamic capital market.