Saudi Arabia is on course to join MSCI Inc.’s emerging-markets index in 2018, according to the chairman of the market regulator, after the kingdom gave foreign investors greater access to its almost $400 billion stock exchange.
The regulator this week made changes including lowering the amount qualified foreign financial institutions must have under management to access the market and increasing the stake they can own in a company. The amendments “should be enough to put the Saudi market on the watchlist hopefully within 2017,” Mohammed Al-Jadaan, chairman of the Riyadh-based Capital Market Authority, said in a TV interview with Bloomberg Markets Middle East. After that it normally takes four quarters for inclusion in the index, he said.
