One issue that caught my attention over the last few weeks is that of Saudi women no longer being segregated in restaurants. Women and families no longer have separate entrances from men, nor do they have to sit behind partitions. Sounds great?
In practice, at certain restaurants and hotels the unwillingness to implement a segregation policy has been the situation for years. When I was last in Riyadh in 2013, I sat in a hotel foyer where the segregation policy was clearly not enforced.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald in early December, "while some restaurants and cafes in the coastal city of Jiddah and Riyadh's upscale hotels had already been allowing unrelated men and women to sit freely, the move codifies what has been a sensitive issue in the past among traditional Saudis who view gender segregation as a religious requirement."
As far as I'm concerned the policy of segregation is very a silly one and doesn't work very well in practice.
At the same time, the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, has seen some of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, go to market in an initial public offering (IPO) which raised up to USD $2 trillion, at a point a few days ago. The shares were bought by primarily domestic investors, since the it was decided not to list on an international exchange.
As Al Jazeera wrote: "Banks were told to relax lending limits to maximize subscriptions, the richest Saudi families were pressed to make large commitments, retail investors got bonus shares, the governments of neighbouring allies Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were asked to help, and the Saudi state even committed more than $2 billion of its own money."
But the IPO was successful in the end, on a domestic exchange at least. What will happen when it looks to go to an international exchange? Aramco's yield is a long way below what other large oil companies pay: Exxon Mobil Corp.'s dividend yield is currently 5.1%, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc pays 6.8%. According to Al Jazeera: "Even some Saudi companies provide better yields. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Co. yields 6.8%, and Saudi Basic Industries Corp., which Aramco is acquiring, pays 4.9%."
So what next?