As foreign interest in the Saudi stock market reaches unprecedented levels, international investment houses are looking to develop products designed to provide western institutional investors with new means of gaining access to the booming Gulf’s largest bourse.

The kingdom’s financial services sector has gone through a dramatic transformation in the past couple of years as it has been liberalised and opened up to foreign institutions. But direct investment in the Tadawul All-share index is restricted to Saudi residents and citizens of the other five Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states.