Saudi economic city passes the IPO test
The anatomy of King Abdullah Economic City
With hundreds of billions of dollars of project finance expected to be raised in the Gulf over the next decade, the world’s largest investment banks are once again establishing offices in the Middle East.
Arab governments are vying with each other to provide the quality of regulation and the infrastructure that will attract the lion’s share of these banks’ activity and enable them to claim the title of the region’s financial capital.
Bahrain has historically been the choice of most of the international banks but Dubai and Qatar are investing huge sums in creating internationally acceptable legal and regulatory systems for their financial centres.
Now Saudi Arabia, where the regulator, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (Sama), runs the financial sector with an iron fist, is creating two locations that will house banks, brokers, regulators and leading corporations.
King Abdullah Economic City...
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