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The stock market in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is quickly developing and maturing. While the inefficiencies of this market have already been attributed to its mechanics (Abdeen and Shook, 1984; Butler and Malaikah, 1992; Abdelkader, 1993), information concerning the market players has not been available. This research reports descriptive results of 74 interviews with Saudi investors. The results provide insight into the information that is used for investing decisions, support prior evidence of market inefficiency, and encourage more research in this area.

Conventional insurance creates a gap in the financial system across the world that manifests from the global financial and economic crisis. There is an increasing demand for insurance schemes that will bridge the gap of financial and economic crisis globally. More recently, there is an advocacy in Saudi Arabia for achieving Vision 2030 by various facets of human endeavours such as strengthening financial markets and boasting economic development. The purpose of this paper is to deeply explore policy and reinforcement of the legal framework of Islamic insurance as essential bedrocks in Islamic finance that are Shari’ah compliant to achieve Saudi Vision 2030 for overall sustainability of all spheres of human endeavours in the country.

Content analysis and systematic literature review are used as methodological approaches in this paper. There are various sources of accessing secondary data used in this study such as online peer review, journals and library-based sources. Through the exploration of various secondary data, five major themes were identified in this study, namely, policy, legal framework, Islamic insurance, Islamic finance and Saudi Vision 2030. Analysis of various themes were done systematically in this paper. The methodology provides theoretical and practical foundations for reinforcing policy and legal framework for Islamic insurance, specifically in Islamic finance to achieve Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia. It is the policy and legal framework that can provide necessary dynamics for strengthening Islamic insurance in particular and Islamic finance in general towards attaining sustainable Vision 2030 in the country.

The paper demonstrated that policy period is explicitly associated with Islamic insurance, whereby Takaful insurance is regarded as policyholder rather than shareholder-oriented. Similarly, it is established that there is need to specifically mention the policy period and the nature of contract in Islamic insurance should not be limited to only mutual cooperation among the participants in connection with the losses but it should capture element of sharing income generated from investment between insurer and policyholders using predetermined ratio for such as provided with theoretical legal framework (Shari’ah) in connection with Islamic insurance model as an integral part of Islamic finance.

It will depart completely from conventional insurance where borrowing of funds and investment are put at fixed interest (Riba), uncertainty (Gharar) and speculative ideas (Maisir). Avoidance of different elements ascribed with conventional insurance would enable Saudi Arabia to strengthen financial system and boast economic development with an emphasis on an effective policy and efficient legal framework towards attaining Vision 2030 in the country.

The methodology provides theoretical and practical foundations for reinforcing policy and legal framework for Islamic insurance, specifically in Islamic finance to achieve Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia.

Conventional insurance creates a gap in financial system across the world that manifests from the global financial and economic crisis. There is an increasing demand for insurance scheme that will bridge the gap of financial and economic crisis globally. More recently, there is an advocacy in Saudi Arabia for achieving Vision 2030 by various facets of human endeavours such as strengthening financial market and boasting economic development.

With this emphasis, it will depart completely from conventional insurance where borrowing of funds and investment are put at fixed interest (Riba), uncertainty (Gharar) and speculative ideas (Maisir). Avoidance of different elements ascribed with conventional insurance would enable Saudi Arabia to strengthen financial system and boast economic development with an emphasis on an effective policy and efficient legal framework towards attaining Vision 2030 in the country.

This paper aims to examine the effect of Web-based financial reporting and social media platforms on the proxies of information asymmetry in the Saudi Stock Exchange.

The sample of this paper consists of 133 Saudi listed non-financial companies for the year 2019. Web-based disclosure level was measured using 25 items, and the social media platforms examined in this study are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The information asymmetry proxies are measured using the relative spread and the time-weighted average bid-ask spread.

The empirical results have shown that there is a negative and significant relation between Web-based financial reporting and the adoption of social media platforms and the proxies of information asymmetry. Indeed, the relative spread and the time-weighted average bid-ask spread decreased with increased Web-based reporting levels. Among three platforms (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), the results show that only the use of Twitter as a channel for information disclosure has a negative and significant effect on information asymmetry proxies. Consequently, in the Saudi context, the authors demonstrate that the assumptions of the agency, stewardship and signaling theories are supported. Also, results reveal that the effect of information disclosure through websites and social media on reducing information asymmetry is stronger for large companies than small companies.

The paper provides new insights into the role played by websites and social media platforms in the reduction of the information asymmetry in the stock market. Consequently, investors and regulatory authorities in the Saudi financial market must give great importance to online information disclosure and its implications for lowering information asymmetry. This empirical study informs regulators in Saudi Arabia to conduct the better practice of Web-based and social media financial reporting and to regulate the current practice of information disclosure. Besides, the obtained results have the potential to convince firms’ managers to improve online information disclosure to benefit from the reduction in information asymmetry.

Unlike previous studies, this study investigates, simultaneously, the effect of Web-based and social media information disclosure on the proxies of information asymmetry in a developing economy. In addition, the hypotheses of this study are developed based on a set of theories (the agency, signaling and stewardship theories), to verify the applicability of these three theories in the Saudi context.

This article investigates concentration, efficiency, and profitability of commercial banks operating in Saudi Arabia, which is considering acceding to the World Trade Organisation whose rules on financial services liberalisation could pose a competitive challenge to local banks. We use regression analysis to investigate the underlying determinants of Saudi bank concentration, efficiency, and profitability. The significance of the study stems from the conventional premise that highly concentrated banking or credit market introduces inefficiencies that would harm firms’ access to credit thus hindering economic growth. If banks were found to be highly concentrated and hence inefficient, then the relevant policy question that should be addressed by Saudi Arabian policy makers is what should be done to alleviate the situation. Empirical results show that Saudi banking market is highly concentrated, and healthy competition through the Saudi adoption of corrective measures would ease the problem. The Saudi government may like to consider concurrently joining the WTO, and allow non‐banking institutions to enter into brokerage business, offer financial products and services (investment banking, brokerage, and portfolio management), and compete with commercial banks through fair participation in auctioning of government securities.

This paper investigates the Saudi market and the ownership structures of listed firms within the Saudi context. This paper examines the historical phases of evolution of the Saudi market since the first flotation of a Saudi firm in 1935 to date. The data reveals high ownership by families and the government (30%) in the total companies listed. This paper also underscores the capacity of the Saudi market to develop into one of the leading stock exchange markets in the Middle East and East Asia. The discussion concludes that the Saudi market needs greater transparency, better legal frameworks, corporate governance codes, and more regulation, so as to realise its potential.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the Islamic religious occasions can, through their impact on investor sentiment, affect returns in six Arab financial markets.

In this paper, the authors test the effect of the occasions of Hajj pilgrimage, Ramadan, Eid-al-Fitr, Mawlid and Ashura during the period of 2001-2016 on Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain financial markets. Three measures of investor sentiment are used: trading volume, high minus low and psychological line index.

Higher effect of investor sentiment on returns is detected after Hajj pilgrimage than that before Hajj pilgrimage in all studied financial markets. The positive emotions during Ramadan contribute significantly to the increase in returns in Arab financial markets. Results indicate that most of studied financial markets exhibit a significant effect of investor sentiment on returns during the first 10 days and the second 10 days of Ramadan. Empirical results indicate that Eid-al-Fitr affects the relation between investor sentiment and returns in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Dubai financial markets. Relationship between investor sentiment and returns is not is not significantly affected by the Mawlid occasion, except in the Dubai and Kuwait financial markets.

The Islamic occasions of the Hajj pilgrimage, Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr affect significantly the relation between investor sentiment and returns.

The main objective of this paper is to highlight the unprecedented growth of Islamic banking and finance in the contemporary finance world. It captures the advancements of Islamic banking and finance industry across the tools, systems, sectors, markets and over 75 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

The paper deals with the paradigm of Islamic banking and finance. It constitutes a general review that bears special features, facts and figures over the recent developments of Islamic banking and finance across the globe. It takes stock of the growing institutional and infrastructure support for the Islamic banking and finance system in Muslim countries and Western financial markets.

The findings of the paper hold that Islamic banking and finance industry has been making breakthrough improvements to become a truly viable and competitive alternative to conventional systems at the global level. Islamic banking and finance institutions have acquired booming grounds in the Middle East, South East and South East Asia. These growing Islamic hubs have been acting as a launching pad to promote Islamic banking in Western business and financial markets. There are some core factors contributing to the recent success of Islamic banking and finance, such as spiraling oil prices worldwide, prolonged boom in the Middle Eastern economies, product innovation and sophistication, increasingly receptive attitude of conventional regulators and information technology advancements that have been acting as a catalyst for the Islamic banking and finance industry to go global. Given all growth patterns, Islamic banking may be able to win over the majority of customers from the Muslim world that constitutes almost 24 per cent of the world's population (over 1.3 billion), and other ethical groups across the globe in times ahead.

The paper takes stock of on‐going developments in Islamic banking and finance industry worldwide. It deals with latest information, facts and figures, which however do not amount to a substantive volume to allow statistical testing and analysis to figure out the main factors and their actual contributions in making Islamic banking and finance emerge as the fastest growing industry of the global finance. This paper mostly bears a subjective outlook.

The paper aims to attract the global attention towards the fastest growing industry of the contemporary world of finance. It presents the case of the Islamic banking and finance industry in the most powerful, comprehensive and logical fashions to remove all misgivings about it in some circles, and let it be seen as an industry adding more ethical, competitive, flexible and diversified tools and systems to global financial markets. The paper highlights the increasing moral and material support that Islamic banking has been enjoying from Muslim governments and the public, and Western market players and regulators. It draws attention towards the growing number of products, systems, infrastructures and supporting institutions of Islamic banking over the recent years. The current trends of Islamic banking industry worldwide captured in this paper can tell all about its strength and weakness, future prospects and ambitions to become a truly innovative, competitive and integrated part of contemporary global finance.

This paper seeks to review and extend previous research on the performance of Islamic mutual funds (IMFs) by evaluating the relative performance of IMFs and conventional funds during the global economic crisis in the context of the Saudi Arabian capital market.

This paper compares the market timing and stock selection abilities of 159 mutual funds listed on the Saudi Arabian stock market from 2007 to 2011 by using the CAPM regression and Treynor and Mazuy models. The paper addresses the benchmark problem from which most prior IMFs studies suffered by using appropriate regional benchmarks. As a robustness check, coefficients of IMFs and conventional funds are compared by using the differences in mean and standard deviation analysis obtained from the standard CAPM model on individual funds.

The empirical results show evidence of better performance of IMFs relative to conventional funds during periods of economic crisis. In addition, although there is no evidence of relative superiority in market timing ability, managers of IMFs appear to have better stock selection ability during times of economic crisis.

The combination of superior stock selection ability of IMFs and the negative market timing ability of conventional funds suggest that IMFs offer better hedging opportunities for investors during periods of economic downturn.

The findings of this paper suggest that IMFs can provide hedging benefits during adverse economic conditions – an issue of great importance due to the current and forecast insecurity surrounding the global capital markets. By holding a portion of their investment portfolio in IMFs, investors can experience a higher degree of confidence in terms of investment security, growth and returns. Similarly, managers of conventional funds can improve risk adjusted performance by following similar screening criteria as IMFs during economic slowdowns.

This paper represents the first comprehensive study on the comparative performance of Islamic and conventional mutual funds during the current financial crisis by including all fund managers listed on the Saudi Arabian stock market. The paper extends the knowledge of the emerging literature of Islamic finance and mutual fund performance.

This paper aims to measure the stability extent of the banking sector in Saudi Arabia, including Islamic and conventional banks (CBs), using quarterly data.

The paper uses seemingly unrelated regressions to estimate the determinants of the z-score.

The panel data model shows that Islamic banks (IBs) reduce the financial stability index relatively; meanwhile, they contribute efficiently to enhance the financial stability through the diversification of their assets. The Saudi banking sector exhibits strong concentration affecting the financial stability negatively.

The paper’s topic can be extended to cover the recent period.

The limited presence of IBs in the Saudi banking sector jeopardizes any effort to improve the financial stability.

By attracting more clients, IBs would contribute more to the financial stability in the Saudi economy. Also, the monetary authority has to expand the share of IBs in the financial system at least 50-50 compared to CBs.

The z-score is mostly analyzed with yearly data; in this paper we use quarterly data to describe at infra-annual frequency the variability of the z-score index. Also, we consider in detail the statistical properties of the banks’ data.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what effect, if any, foreign ownership has on the relationship between board interlocking and firm performance.

Data on 131 firms from various sectors listed in the Saudi Financial Market during the period of 2016 were collected. Board interlocking was measured using two indicators (number of interlocks and number of interlocks per member) and then it was divided into three levels (1-6/7-14/15 or more). As for the performance of firms, it was measured using two indicators: one operational (return on assets and the other financial (return on equity)). Foreign ownership was considered as a moderator variable. In addition to firm and board characteristics, a set of control variables related to ownership structure was used.

Results provide some support for the “busyness hypothesis” which postulates deterioration in the effectiveness of directors, in terms of their monitoring role, when increasing the number of interlocks per director. Results also manifest a positive effect exerted by foreign ownership in terms of turning around the otherwise negative relationship between board interlocking and firm performance in the second level of interlocking (7-14) Code Article 12’s limit on the number of interlocking per director to a maximum of five directorships. However, there is limited compliance to this code among Saudi firms. The study indicates the need to comply with the governance code in order to enhance governance which undercut performance.

Highlighting the role of foreign ownership in enhancing corporate governance in a conservative business environment characterized by relational networks with gaps in corporate governance.