Barclays Opens Riyadh Office After Winning Saudi Capital Markets Licence
The bank has installed Majed Al Hassoun to run its new Saudi legal entity and added four senior hires plus an independent director to its board.
Barclays has opened an office in Riyadh's King Abdullah Financial District, giving the bank a permanent base in the Saudi capital after it secured an operating licence from the Capital Market Authority.
The CMA licence covers investment banking and global markets work in the kingdom. It sits alongside a regional headquarters licence Barclays obtained in 2025, so the bank now holds both the regulatory permissions and the regional footing it needs to run Saudi business from Riyadh.
Majed Al Hassoun runs the local legal entity as CEO and Head of Investment Banking at Barclays Capital Saudi. Based in Riyadh, he is responsible for building the investment banking and global markets franchise and serves as the bank's senior contact for regulators and other market participants in the country. He reports to Khaled El Dabag, who heads the regional headquarters and leads investment banking for the Middle East. El Dabag is co-CEO of the Middle East business with Walid Mezher.
Al Hassoun arrived from State Street Saudi Arabia, where he was chief executive. "I am delighted to join Barclays and lead efforts to build a strong business in Saudi Arabia," he said.
I am delighted to join Barclays and lead efforts to build a strong business in Saudi Arabia,
Four other senior appointments fill out the team. Abdulaziz Abdulrahman A. Alshenaifi is Head of Markets, Abdullah AlToukhi is Head of Institutional Coverage, Susheel Jain is Chief Financial Officer and Abdulrahman Alanazi is Head of Compliance and Money Laundering Reporting Officer.
C. S. Venkatakrishnan, Barclays Group Chief Executive, described the Riyadh opening as an important step in the bank's growth in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.
Talal AlKhereiji has joined the board as an Independent Non-Executive Director, sitting alongside Chairman Mohammed Al-Sarhan, who was appointed earlier.
Holding a regional headquarters licence and a CMA investment banking licence matters because it lets Barclays book both its regional management and its market-facing activity in one place, rather than servicing Saudi clients from outside the country. That structure has become the standard entry route for international banks as the kingdom pushes lenders to establish local entities with local accountability. Riyadh's demand for dedicated staff, named executives and a resident board has become as much a condition of doing business as the licence itself.
The office now has named heads for markets, institutional coverage, finance and compliance, with Al Hassoun accountable to regulators for all of it.
