Kuwait’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) continued its efforts to improve the local market by proactively launching a full review of the CMA Laws with the intention of keeping pace with the latest developments in international capital markets. A committee was formed for this purpose and a consulting firm has been appointed to help it conduct the review.

As part of its commitment to deepening the market, the CMA issued draft regulations on preference shares, trading of bonds or sukuk, and issuance of sukuk.

“It was heartening to note that the draft regulations have been circulated with the objective of gathering the views of market participants prior to issuing them officially. Clearly the CMA wants to work with the market for the benefit of market participants,” says Subramanian Seshadri, head of HSBC Securities Services, Kuwait.

The latter half of the year saw a change of guard at the CMA as the term of first Board of Commissioners came to an end. From an international investor’s standpoint, with the MSCI upgrade in June 2014 of UAE and Qatar, Kuwait has become the largest component of the MSCI Frontier Markets Index with a sizeable weighting of 25%.