Saudi Bourse Plans to Dial Up M&A Amid Capital-Markets Push

Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange operator is eying mergers and acquisitions as a means to broaden the kingdom’s capital markets amid a flood of local offerings, a senior official said.

“M&A will play more of a role in our future than it has done in our past,” Lee Hodgkinson, chief strategy officer at Saudi Tadawul Group Holding Co., said in an interview in London. The company will aim for “digestible” and “strategically relevant acquisitions,” he said, without providing details of any potential targets.

Saudi Arabia has seen numerous companies coming to its Tadawul stock exchange in recent years. As ...