All Transactions Go

Where are you positioned in the Saudi market in 2014?

In IPOs, we are the largest investment bank when it comes to equity capital market (ECM) deals, and not only in Saudi Arabia, but in the whole of the Middle East. We were the largest not only in number of transactions, but also in the size of these transactions. Our pipeline in 2014 is massive. The Saudi market is one of the most active markets in IPO and ECM transactions.

What services are you providing to meet emerging demands?

The Basel III requirements are putting pressure on the banks, meaning they cannot lend as much as they used to. Therefore, the number of sukuk issuances is increasing, as are their sizes. Also, more and more semi-governmental institutions will go out and start issuing sukuks. We handle these transactions. The other line of business we are doing is asset management. In asset management, we have 17 funds. We just launched two recently, a real estate fund and an equity income yielding fund. In 2013, the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) was up over 30% and our flagship fund was up over 40%. We had more than 11%-12% outperformance, so that is an excellent result. We think 2014 is going to be a good year, too, especially if the market opens up, and we think it will. The market is ready on a technical level to be opened, and everyone is anticipating this. From technical, legal, and regulatory standpoints, we are ready. Hopefully, that will happen soon.

Where do you hope to see Saudi Fransi Capital by 2020?

We have three major activities: investment banking, asset management, and brokerage, and we are now looking at specialized services, whereby we cater for the corporates and institutional investors. We are now the first independent exchange-traded fund (ETF) market maker. Also, we do fund administration and custody for institutional investors’ DBMs and their funds. We want to maintain our position in investment banking as the bank of choice and the largest investment bank. In asset management, we have superior performance and we want this to be married with the size of our assets under management (AUM), because the size of our AUM is not reflecting our performance. This is mainly because the largest AUMs you find in the Saudi Arabian market are coming from the banks that have the largest number of retail clients, which is something that we don’t have. I think with the new endowments we have in Saudi and the new government spending and investments, we are hoping to get some of these assets managed under Saudi Fransi Capital. On the brokerage side, I think our brokerage platform is an award-winner and we continue to develop and enhance this and the features we provide. I am hoping we will gain a double-digit market share. This is basically what I am thinking of for Saudi Fransi in 2020.