Gulf capital markets look to innovation to boost activity

Saudi Arabia’s $17.5bn sovereign bond issue in October has been a high point for the Gulf’s fixed-income market this year. In some ways it was a sign of Gulf capital markets’ growing maturity, as well as a reflection of the large fiscal gap that governments are having to bridge. However, investor interest in other instruments has been more modest – which has encouraged regulators to become notably more innovative, with a raft of new products launched over the past couple of months.