Singapore will attract more Islamic investments from the Middle East following the share sale of Sabana Shari’ah Compliant Industrial REIT, the world’s largest Islamic property trust, HSBC Holdings Plc said.

Sabana raised as much as $664.4 million in the sale. The 458 million shares offered, which exclude reserved stock or those for key investors, were 2.5 times subscribed, the trust said in a statement yesterday. The shares for retail investors drew 12 times more demand, said Rafe Haneef, managing director of global markets for HSBC Amanah, the Shariah-compliant unit of Europe’s largest bank.

“If you look at investors in the region and in the Middle East, banks, investment houses and fund managers are looking for Shariah-compliant assets,” he said in a phone interview from Singapore today. “The launching of Sabana fits well within Singapore’s ambitions to become a hub for Islamic finance.”

The Islamic finance industry has been growing 20% annually since 2000 and its assets are estimated to reach US$1.6 trillion ($2.1 trillion) by 2012 compared with US$660 billion in 2007, according to an Islamic Financial Services Board report issued in April. Islamic law, or Shariah, bans investment in industries such as gambling and alcohol.