If you want to work for an international bank in the Gulf this year, move to Saudi

There’s a message coming out of a number of international banks when it comes to their presence in Saudi Arabia – it’s time to expand.

We’ve pointed to the fact that the likes of Nomura and BNP Paribas are expanding in the kingdom, and now other firms are talking about recruitment.

Firstly, there’s Barclays’ wealth management division, which seems to be talking about a significant recruitment drive. Rory Gilbert, head of Middle East and North Africa told Bloomberg: “We’d be crazy to limit ourselves to a handful of bankers when we can see the oil prices are going to sustain the Saudi economy for the foreseeable future. In four or five years, we’ll have a much broader presence in Saudi Arabia.”

Standard Chartered has also started a capital markets office in Saudi Arabia, and is aiming to compete with Saudi British Bank (SABB), the local bank that HSBC has a stake in, over debt offerings in the kingdom.

“Unless we have a large local presence in Saudi Arabia, which HSBC has, it’s going to be difficult to dislodge,” Viswanathan Shankar, Standard Chartered’s chief executive officer for the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

So far, however, Saudi is slightly resistant to both foreign banks and talent. As we’ve pointed to previously, onerous localisation requirements have made firms in the region reluctant to hire expat workers.

Meanwhile, the Saudi authorities have put “quite restrictive licensing and branch opening processes” in place for international banks, according to Reinhold Leichtfuss, leader of financial institutions at the Boston Consulting Group Middle East.  The result is that licenses for international banks can sometimes take years to be approved.