Arab News
Arab news, Wed, Oct 29, 2025 | Jumada al-Awwal 7, 1447
FII9: Standard Chartered ‘very optimistic’ about Saudi Arabia amid investment boom — CEO
Saudi Arabia:
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.”