Being a financial watchdog and regulator is rarely a dull job, even at the best of times, but Abdulrahman Al-Tuwaijri has had a particularly eventful reign at the helm of the Saudi Arabian Capital Markets Authority (CMA). When he was appointed chairman of the CMA in 2006, the country was in the middle of a stock market collapse that wiped about $500bn off the market’s value.
“Millions of people were chasing just a few shares, thinking that it was a way to get rich quickly, and it ended in a crash – a very painful one,” Mr Tuwaijri recollects. “There were literally millions of Saudis participating, housewives, everyone.”
