Tadawul has been named by MSCI to the organization’s Emerging Market Index Watch List. The announcement comes on the heels of a series of market reforms that the Saudi Capital Market has undertaken as part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic transformation program, which in part seeks to bring the Saudi market into alignment with its emerging and developed market peers and gain recognition for the country as an indexed emerging market.
The Kingdom’s addition to the Watch List and anticipated inclusion in the MSCI Emerging Market Index will ultimately make Tadawul, its constituent listed companies and investors who trade on it, benefit from what is anticipated to be a greater allocation of weighting of global emerging market funds to the Exchange. Overall, growth in emerging markets globally is expected by the International Monetary Fund to improve for the second consecutive year, rising to a projected 4.5 percent in 2017, compared to 4 and 4.1 percent in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Over the past year, Tadawul and the Capital Market Authority (CMA) have worked closely with Saudi government bodies and leading emerging market investors to introduce Vision 2030 capital market reforms, and these have in turn helped move the needle further on achieving Watch List status. Key reforms to date have, among others, included:
• The introduction of T+2 settlement and securities borrowing and lending, which have significantly enhanced the ease of trading and created new opportunities for market participants.
• Adoption this past January of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) which enhances comparability of corporates across markets and enables easier analysis of sector performance.
• A Delivery versus Payment Model (DvP) to comply with the principle of DvP, to provide an extra layer of trade execution security to investors that trade securities on Tadawul.
• Adoption of new corporate governance rules issued by the Saudi Capital Market Authority (CMA) in February to enhance the rights of shareholders and board members and provide greater clarity and more transparency around determining commercial strategic planning, and roles, responsibilities and oversight of corporate entities and third parties.
• Investor relations training for Tadawul’s 24 corporates with the most international exposure and liquidity to enhance transparency and disclosure and enhance investor relations capabilities within Saudi listed companies.
• Enabling foreign participation in Saudi IPOs.
• Introduction of Nomu, a parallel equity market for Qualified Investors that offers lighter listing requirements and serves as an alternative platform for companies to go public.
• Launch of a Real Estate Investment Trusts’ (REITs) market to further broaden and diversify investment opportunities.
• Enhancements to the Independent Custody Model which enable custodians to reject the settlement of unconfirmed trades executed by the executing brokers.
• Dropping the Exchange requirement of cash prefunding for specific investors to align trading practices with international standards and standardize institutional investors’ trading processes.
• Spin-off of the Securities Depository Center (SDC) to enhance the efficiency of deposit and registration services offered by the depositary center.