Euromoney awarded Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) the 2007 Financing Award for the Information and Communication Technology sector for demonstrating the fungibility of its airtime. In March 2007, Mobily raised SR10.781 billion ($2.875 billion) in an Islamic financing deal syndicated by ABN AMRO Bank, Banque Saudi Fransi, Bank Calyon, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, The National Commercial Bank, Samba Financial Group and Saudi Hollandi Bank. Mobily innovatively demonstrated the fungibility of airtime as an asset to raise to the capital. Fungibility itself, as an economic concept, is different from liquidity. Whereas liquidity means that a good can be easily exchanged for money or another different good, a good is fungible if one unit of the good is substantially equivalent to another unit of the same good of the same quality at the same time and place. Examples of highly fungible commodities are petrol, electricity, precious metals, many currencies, and judging by the Mobily deal, phone air time. Accepting the award in Dubai on behalf of Mobily's chief executive officer was Humoud Al-Ghobaini, head of Corporate Communications. Chief Financial Officer, Thamer Alhosani, said the award was a reflection of the efforts of the board of directors, its executives and employees. Last month, Islamic Finance news for the same financing deal, handed over two awards to Mobily: one for the best Saudi Islamic finance deal of the year, and the second for the most innovative Islamic financing method. __
