DUBAI: Saudi Arabia announced a string of
reforms to its stock market that could attract billions of dollars of
fresh foreign money and smooth sales of state assets as the kingdom
grapples with damage to its finances caused by low oil prices.
When Riyadh opened its bourse to direct
foreign investment last June, it took a cautious approach, imposing
tight ownership limits and minimum qualifications for overseas
institutions to reduce the risk of them destabilizing the market.
Reforms announced on Tuesday suggested
authorities are now courting foreign money more aggressively. Last week,
Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman outlined sweeping plans to cut
the kingdom's dependence on oil exports.
Among his plans are a privatization program
that will include offering a stake of under 5 percent in national oil
giant Saudi Aramco. The Saudi stock market could have trouble absorbing
the shares without an infusion of foreign money.
“This is a very good piece of news and
supportive of the stock market in the medium- to long term," Sebastien
Henin, head of asset management at Abu Dhabi's The National Investor,
said of Tuesday's announcement.
"It may clear the road for the possible
listing of Aramco shares...All in all, this will align the bourse with
international markets and encourage foreign investors to allocate funds
to Saudi shares."
Each foreign institutional investor will be
allowed to own directly a stake of just under 10 percent of a single
listed company, up from a previous ceiling of 5 percent, the Capital
Market Authority (CMA) announced.
Other restrictions were scrapped, including a
ceiling of 10 percent on combined ownership by foreign institutions of
the market's entire capitalization. All foreign investors combined will
still be limited to owning 49 percent of any single firm.
To qualify as a foreign institutional investor
in Saudi Arabia, each asset manager will only need to have a minimum of
US$1 billion of assets under management globally, instead of US$5
billion. The CMA said it would now accept investments by new types of
foreign institution including sovereign wealth funds and university
endowments.
The regulator also said it had approved the
introduction of securities lending and covered short-selling to the
stock market, which would give investors more options to hedge their
purchases against market downturns.
Meanwhile, the Saudi Stock Exchange will
introduce during the first half of 2017 the settlement of trades within
two working days of execution, the bourse said.
At present, trades must be settled on the same
day. This has inconvenienced foreign investors in particular as they
must have large amounts of money on hand before trading, which can be
hard given Riyadh's time zone and its Sunday-Thursday business week.
Many big emerging markets have settlement after two days.
MSCI ENTRY
Saudi Arabia wants to join international index
compiler MSCI's emerging markets index as soon as in 2017, because many
global funds base their investments on that index. Officials have
conceded same-day settlement is an obstacle to inclusion.
MSCI is expected to say in June whether it
will review Saudi Arabia for possible inclusion in the index, and the
reforms announced on Tuesday could help to sway its decision.
Nevertheless, the Saudi stock market did not
react positively to the announcement; its index was 1.4 percent lower
in late trade.
One reason is that the reforms will take
considerable time to materialize. The CMA said its new foreign ownership
rules, and a date for them to take effect, would be revealed only by
the end of the first half of 2017.
A deeper reason is that despite last June's
opening to foreign institutions, overseas funds have so far not been
very keen to put their money into Saudi Arabia; total direct and
indirect foreign investment accounts for less than 1 percent of the
US$408 billion stock market, bourse data shows.
Low oil prices, as well as the inefficiencies
of Saudi firms and the greater dynamism of other emerging economies,
have diverted money from the kingdom. It may take years before it
becomes clear if the economic reform drive will change this.
At the end of 2015, only nine foreign
institutions had obtained licenses to invest directly in the Saudi
market. The Middle East head of a big international fund manager,
declining to be named because of commercial sensitivities, said this
number would not necessarily rise sharply when restrictions were eased.
"You can ease regulations as much as you want,
but the value proposition of Saudi Arabia needs to be strong enough to
make it worthwhile for institutional investors to come in," he said.
(Additional reporting by Celine Aswad and Tom Arnold in Dubai and David French in Riyadh; editing by Anna Willard)
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