Equity markets: Saudi Arabia’s big step forward

For years Saudi Arabia has been the ultimate stock market loner, combining size and depth with stubborn inaccessibility. A market as big as Russia’s, the Saudi equity market has been closed to all foreign investors bar those prepared to tolerate an inefficient and sometimes murky system of swaps and P-notes; those who want direct exposure to the hydrocarbon-rich Gulf have instead had to go for the more open, but much less mature markets of Qatar and the UAE.