Economy

With its sound government finances coupled with investor- and trade-friendly policies, Saudi Arabia has been successful in attracting strong investment inflows. Now the government appears determined to proceed with reforms that are designed to garner further foreign direct investment (FDI).

The transition to a new era of foreign participation in the Kingdom’s bourse, the Saudi Stock Exchange, also known as the Tadawul, has been a keenly anticipated event in the region’s financial markets. However, this is only the latest step in a longer process of market reform, where the exchange has evolved from a single-product market to an...

The opening up of the GCC’s stock exchanges to foreign investment has been a salient feature of market commentary in recent years. The global economic crisis sent shockwaves through regional exchanges and, in the ensuing period of depressed trading, regulators around the Gulf embarked upon a market reform effort in a bid to attract scarce...

While the domestic private equity (PE) sphere continues to grow, international players are also paying closer attention to the Saudi market. In April 2015 the US buyout firm TPG Capital inked a deal that gave it majority stake in the family-owned fast food chain Kudu, a transaction which according to earlier reports valued the Saudi Arabian...

Over 2014, there has been a welcome recovery of initial public offering (IPO) activity in the GCC region. According to PwC, 16 GCC companies went to regional markets, raising a total of $10.8bn. The tail end of the year proved to be a particularly fruitful time, accounting for $7.3bn of the total and raising hopes that 2015 would see the...

The corporate governance regimes of Saudi Arabia’s family-owned businesses (FOBs) are a salient talking point in financial circles, for obvious reasons. Estimates as to their contribution to GDP vary, but a 2012 study by the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry claimed that the Kingdom’s FOBs in that year accounted for around SR350bn ($93...