Riyadh – Mubasher: Goldman Sachs Group Incorporation became the first Wall Street bank to establish a Middle Eastern headquarters (HQ) in Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg.

Goldman obtained a licence from the Saudi Ministry of Investment (MISA) to set up its regional HQ in Riyadh, Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter.

The MISA licence grants companies full ownership to operate freely across the Kingdom.  

Per Saudi laws, companies with state contracts must have a regional HQ in the kingdom with a minimum of 15 employees. However, It was not revealed how many staffers would move to Saudi Arabia and how much of Goldman’s regional operations would be based there.

Goldman Sachs’ Richard Cormack, the Co-Head of Equity Capital Markets EMEA, recently highlighted that Saudi Arabia could form the majority of the MENA region’s MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index.