Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince hosted some of the world’s leading investors at the palatial Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh . “This system had the vices of committees -- slow, ponderous, sometimes missing opportunities, conservative, risk-averse. The broad nature of the shakeup has unnerved some investors at a time Saudi Arabia wants to attract foreign money.“It isn’t that they arrested senior princes that concerns international investors,” Crispin Hawes, a managing director at Teneo Intelligence, a political risk consulting firm in London, said in a phone interview. “Until there is some clarity on charges or possible penalties, investors don’t know the risks of doing business with major Saudi partners.”The purge, and the kingdom’s deepening feud with Iran, spurred a selloff of almost $18 billion across Gulf stock markets through Wednesday. The decline cut the combined market capitalization of bourses in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to $900 billion, the lowest level in a year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Some investors saw the crackdown as presenting an opportunity.

Source: Economic Times November 10, 2017 02:37 UTC