It comes after a rampant rise in the stock price of the Kingdom’s big lenders.
“I think Saudi banks in general are in a sweet spot,” Hedi Ben Mlouka, CEO and founder of FIM partners, told Bloomberg TV on Thursday. “You are seeing growth no longer coming from a low base, we are talking big numbers here that move the balance sheet and the profitability of these banks. The ‘Shareek’ program is going to spur the first growth we have seen in corporate borrowing to support all this capex,” he said.
The $2.7 trillion Shareek program was announced by the Saudi government last month and aims to provide incentives for publicly quoted companies to channel dividend payments into long-term investment in the Kingdom.