Major Saudi finance group appoints woman as chief executive

Saudi Arabia’s Samba Financial Group has named Rania Mahmoud Nashar as the chief executive. AP Photo

Samba Financial Group has become the second major financial institution in Saudi Arabia to name a female chief executive in less than a week, as the country moves towards greater female participation in its workforce.

Samba, Saudi Arabia’s third largest lender by market capitalisation, said in a statement that it had appointed Rania Nashar as its new chief executive, following the resignation of former chief executive Sajjad Razvi for personal reasons.

Ms Nashar sits on the board of Samba Bank in Pakistan and Samba Global Markets Limited Company, and was the first Saudi woman to be recognised as a Certified Anti-Money Laundering specialist by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists in the US.

Her appointment comes just days after the appointment of Sarah Al Suhaimi as the new chief executive of the Saudi stock exchange, the largest in the region. Ms Al Suhaimi was previously chief executive of local investment bank NCB Capital.

“It’s positive news to have such appointments who are deservingly talented and able to help deepen greater female participation in the wider economy,” said John Sfakianakis, the director of economic research at the Gulf Research Centre in Riyadh.

“Greater female participation will help Saudi Arabia meet its 2020 target of unemployment of 9 per cent.”

Increasing female participation in the workforce is a key pillar of Saudi Arabia’s National Transformation Plan, unveiled last year in an attempt to overhaul the country’s economy to better cope with lower oil revenues. The plan envisages increasing female participation in the country’s workforce to 30 per cent by 2030, compared with its current level of 22 per cent.

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