LEADING CHANGE

Sarah Al Suhaimi, Chairperson of the Saudi Tadawul Group, has helped restructure the region’s largest capital market, as well as list its own IPO. With a market cap of $2.7 trillion, Saudi’s stock exchange is increasing its international footing.

- LAYAN ABO SHKIER

Last year, as Saudi Arabia continued on its path to economic diversification, 2021 proved to be a particularly busy year for the kingdom’s stock exchange, led by the Saudi Tadawul Group. In April, the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) announced that it was transforming from being a pure stock exchange to becoming a holding company with four subsidiaries, one of which would be the stock exchange. It then witnessed the major listings of 12 companies throughout the year—compared to four in 2020. And in December, the group finished 2021 by completing its own long-awaited IPO.

As of January 2022, the group’s listing appeared to be doing well after a little over a month. The shares first opened at $30.76 on December 8, 2021, and had reached a closing price of $43.45 by January 19, 2022. The group has been amongst the top five traded companies in Saudi Arabia since the listing, according to Sarah Al Suhaimi, Chairperson of the Saudi Tadawul Group. “We wanted our listing to be a standard,” she explains. “We wanted it to be swift, smooth, proper, in order for us to have the experience to guide companies during their own listings.”

By the end of 2021, the total number of listed companies on the Saudi stock exchange had reached 210. The exchange ended the year as the tenth largest market in the world, with a market capitalization of $2.7 trillion, as of December 2021. Tadawul’s own IPO had to happen at “the right time and for the right reason,” reveals Al Suhaimi. “Us being listed is a natural progression in Tadawul’s journey. It wasn’t a goal on its own.”