Saudi Arabia to Update Foreign Stock Ownership Limits Next Year

Saudi Arabia said it now expects to decide next year whether foreigners can hold majority stakes in local companies, defying expectations for a faster rollout of market reforms and spurring the biggest selloff in the country’s stocks in a week.

“We will be revisiting foreign ownership limits next year,” Mohammed El-Kuwaiz, chairman of the kingdom’s Capital Market Authority, said at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. “Whether or not we will eliminate foreign ownership limits or more gradually increase them on multiple stages, this will really become the output of our analysis.”