Stewart LaBrooy is CEO and executive director of Axis-REIT, Malaysia’s first Islamic office/industrial REIT. He is an active member of APREA, where he serves as vice president on the executive board, and is the chairman pro tem of the newly formed Malaysian REIT Managers Association.

LaBrooy recently spoke with Dr. Jennifer Molloy, editor of The Letter – Asia Pacific, about the formation of Axis-REIT, what it means to be an Islamic REIT and the performance of the Malaysian REIT market in comparison to other Asia Pacific REITs since the global financial crisis.

What does it mean to be an Islamic REIT? How does being an Islamic REIT distinguish Axis-REIT from other REITs?

When we listed, there were no rules for the establishment of Islamic REITs, and so we listed as a conventional REIT. The rules were established in November 2005. The decision to convert our REIT to Islamic came well before the global financial crisis, when we reali