The head of Saudi Arabia’s stock market regulator on Thursday said his agency was open to ideas mooted by western institutions to allow foreign investors to tap into the Middle East’s largest bourse.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Abdulrahman al-Tuwaijri, who was confirmed this week as chairman of the Capital Markets Authority and given the rank of minister, said he was studying the option of launching exchange trading funds, which would offer a basket of traded equities and would be accessible directly to external investors.