Dr. Alberto Brugnoni
Managing Partner
ASSAIF

Alberto G Brugnoni, a former director with Merrill Lynch Bank, is an independent consultant on Islamic finance. In the mid-1980s, he pioneered some of the first Islamic transactions in Europe, and in 1997, released “Pilot Project Genoardo”, a seminal study for the establishment of a Mediterranean Development Bank based on shariah principles. In 2004-2007, he conceived and managed ‘New Life Styles’, a European Commission-funded experimental research, training and implementation project aiming to consolidate the networks of social economy in the EU. This was followed in 2006 by the first real estate Islamic financing in Italy and a project for the rehabilitation of Syrian landfills using shariah-compliant instruments. In September 2011, he has successfully structured the debut syndicated Islamic facility in the Russian Federation for Ak Bars Bank. The transaction was named “Europe Deal of the Year”. Subsequently, he has launched the Takaful industry in Afghanistan advising the Afghanistan Insurance Authority on regulatory issues and product development and worked on Islamic finance product development in Palestine. At present, he lives in Kabul with the remit to draw and implement a nationwide and comprehensive strategy to expand the access to Islamic financial services across rural regions of Afghanistan.

He is the founder and Managing Director of ASSAIF, the oldest European consultancy on Islamic finance that provides strategic institutional advisory to governments, central banks, public and semi-public institutions, regional and local authorities. It operates on a projects-basis model by establishing core teams of professionals and local experts in the legal and Shariah, fiscal and administrative, financial engineering and marketing areas. ASSAIF does not consult with private or commercial ventures.