RIYADH: London-based Standard Chartered bank is ramping up operations in Saudi Arabia as it seeks to capture opportunities from the Kingdom’s rapid economic transformation, according to Group CEO Bill Winters.
Speaking to Asharq Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Winters said the lender believes Saudi Arabia is going through a “fundamental investment boom” amid rapid economic change.
Winters’ comments underscore the key role international banks are playing in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, a strategic framework to diversify the economy away from oil dependence.
“We’re very optimistic about Saudi,” Winters said. “We opened up a full bank ... have a full banking license in Saudi going back about five years, which we’re fully ramping up as we speak — building quite substantially in the Kingdom,” he said.
The CEO added: “We’re quite fortunate in terms of timing that we were granted this license at a time when Saudi is going through such a fundamental investment boom and transformation.”
Winters emphasized that the bank aims to act as a bridge between international investors and Saudi companies expanding abroad, while also supporting the country’s evolving capital markets.
“We’re in a position to bring international investors to Saudi to represent and to finance and provide services to Saudi companies going abroad, supporting trade flows in the region,” he said.
Winters added: “We’re a leading issuer in the debt capital markets across the region and within the Kingdom, absolutely. The Kingdom has reformed tremendously. The financial markets are evolving quickly.”
The executive noted that the key challenge now is ensuring that sufficient funding — domestic and foreign — reaches Saudi Arabia’s ambitious development pipeline.
“The key now is to make sure that there’s enough money, either in the Kingdom, or coming from outside,” Winters said. “We have our own balance sheet, which we bring to bear in the Kingdom. We have very substantial exposures in the Kingdom.”
A key part of their strategy involves originating credit for major infrastructure projects, which are then channeled to non-bank investors such as private credit funds, insurance companies, and pension funds.
Winters concluded by stressing that Saudi Arabia’s growth ambitions can be met if the right capital connections continue to form.
“There’s enough money in the world to fund the growth aspirations of Saudi,” he said. “What we need to do is connect it with the project, which is happening — but there’s no fast-growing major economy in the world that relies extraordinarily on banks.”
