RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All Share Index has risen 10 percent this year, the most among major gauges in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.
Investors are no closer to understanding how the opening of Saudi Arabia’s stock market will work than they were in August, when the country published draft rules on the plan.
Eleven weeks before the end-of-June deadline that the Middle East’s largest bourse set itself to give foreigners direct access to the market, the Riyadh-based Capital Market Authority (CMA) has yet to explain how it will square the new rules with existing restrictions on foreign involvement in Saudi businesses. That’s left would-be investors guessing how trading will be affected by laws that keep foreigners out of industries ranging from real estate to fisheries.
Companies are asking for “more clarity on regulations around the mechanics of investing,” Glenn Lovell, a partner at the Al Tamimi law firm who is advising international investors on the opening of the market, said by phone from Riyadh on March 24. “What will happen, and we see this quite a lot in Saudi Arabia,” is that the issues will be ironed out over an extended period of time as “the implementing officials become more familiar with the new law,” he said.
“On the one hand, Saudis don’t want foreigners disrupting their economic bubble or running loose on their sacred turf, and on the other, they want the economic benefit of letting foreigners in,” Ghanem Nuseibeh, the Dubai-based founder of Cornerstone Global Associates, a Middle East risk consultancy that advises Saudi businesses preparing for the change, said by phone last month.
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