Saudi Arabia

It has been a good couple of years for the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul), which posted considerable growth in 2011 and 2012. Throughout 2012, nearly all of the market’s major indicators improved substantially over the previous year. Market capitalisation was up more than 10% over 2011, for example, due to a spate of initial...

For all its economic success, its public works projects, forests of new economic cities rising from the desert and concerted efforts to infuse new resources into all levels of education, Saudi Arabia has yet to turn the corner on the its long-standing dilemma of how to get greater numbers of nationals into the workforce. For the...

For the past decade, Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of the development of the Islamic financial services (IFS) sector. The Kingdom, which is home to more than a quarter of the GCC’s Islamic financial assets and a handful of the world’s largest sharia-compliant financial institutions, is currently among the top IFS...

The banking sector in Saudi Arabia, which is one of the largest in the GCC, posted solid growth in 2011 and 2012. According to data from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), the central bank, total banking assets in the Kingdom reached SR1.65trn ($439.7bn) at the end of the third quarter of 2012, up from SR1.54trn ($410....

In recent years the reinsurance segment in Saudi has grown substantially. The industry, which is made up of a single dedicated reinsurance company – Saudi Reinsurance – and a handful of firms that offer both insurance and reinsurance services, is considered to be a key driver of future expansion in the Kingdom’s insurance...