Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority (CMA) market regulator said Monday that the number of suspected violations of its rules fell by 16.7 percent in 2011. Saudi stock market regulator said in January that foreign firms would be allowed list on the exchange, is widely expected to allow direct foreign ownership of shares within the next year or so. The number of cases fell to 35 in 2001, it said. "The authority's success in broadening surveillance methods to boost the level of disclosure and transparency in the capital market led to an increase of 16.5 percent in the announcements by listed companies to 2,975 announcements last year," the Capital Markets Authority said in the annual report. Highlighting CMA's achievements in 2011, Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Tuwaijri, chairman and CEO of the CMA, confirmed that the CMA continued its efforts to build a legal and legislative system that identifies the rights and obligations of all parties related to securities business.
