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Saudi bourse Tadawul to reach out to Chinese investors

Xinhua, October 27, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Saudi Stock Exchange, also known as Tadawul, will reach out to Chinese investors, Tadawul CEO Khalid Abdullah Al Hussan said here Thursday.

Al Hussan said the bourse has started meetings with Chinese institutional investors and that the exchange plans to launch roadshows in China next year.

The efforts are part of "Saudi Vision 2030," the country's blueprint to diversify its economy away from oil, Al Hussan told Xinhua on the sidelines of the Pearl Initiative United Nations Global Compact Regional Forum.

China's biggest lender, ICBC, opened a branch in the Saudi capital of Riyadh in June 2015, its fifth in the Gulf region.

It was in June 2015 that the Riyadh-based Tadawul opened up for the first time to qualified foreign institutional investors (QFIs).

Asked if Chinese or other foreign retail investors would be able to buy Saudi shares in the near future, Al Hussan said that beyond QFIs, "we will continue to gradually open the market to new levels of investors."

He said he could not give a timetable for further opening up the bourse.

The Tadawul also conducted roadshows in Tokyo and Singapore in November 2015.

"Reaching out to investors in China is also important as we plan to list the Tadawul market itself," he said. "We plan to do so in 2017."

The listing would be the second initial public offering of an Arab exchange. The last one, by the Dubai Financial Market of the United Arab Emirates, happened on March 7, 2007.

Saudi Arabia supports China's strategic "Belt and Road Initiative" that aims to create an integrated economic and investment area stretching from East Asia through the Middle East to East Africa and western Europe along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

The close partnership and friendship between the two nations was highlighted during Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit last January to Saudi Arabia, where he met with King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Bin Saud.

Asked when Saudi Arabia would be included in the MSCI Emerging Market Index, a globally accepted benchmark for fund managers to measure their fund performances, Al Hussan said the inclusion "is a result, not an objective."

Two of Saudi Arabia's neighbors, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, were included in MSCI in June 2014, a development believed to be able to boost the countries' exposure in global capital markets. Endit