QFIs own 3.3% of issued shares
Saudi investments underweight
More than half of qualified foreign investors (QFIs) in the Saudi stock market are from the US, according to Saudi Tadawul Group, the operator of the stock exchange.
The Saudi exchange has more than 4,000 QFIs, Sarah Al-Suhaimi told the Saudi-US Investment Forum.
“I can say that approximately 55 percent of foreign investments through the QFI programme in our market come from the US.”
QFI ownership in the Saudi stock market reached SAR339.4 billion ($90.3 billion) at the end of 2024, representing approximately 3 percent of issued shares, according to the Asharq Business news portal.
International investors have pumped more than $60 billion into Gulf stocks over the past five years but their share of ownership is still relatively low, putting into question the success of GCC states’ economic diversification policies.
A little under $34 billion was invested in Saudi stocks.
“The big issue over the past few years is the extent to which the active managers remain underweight on the GCC in general and Saudi Arabia in particular,” Tarek Fadlallah, CEO of Nomura Asset Management Middle East in Dubai, told AGBI.
“There’s a perception that Saudi Arabia is an oil-linked economy, so some investors only want to buy stocks when crude prices are high and not when oil prices are where they are today.”
Saudi Arabia is the largest Arab economy, but it still relies on oil for 70 percent of its exports by value and more than half its government revenue.
