Standard & Poor's has signed an index creation agreement with the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul). Under the deal Standard & Poor's can use Tadawul securities data to maintain current and launch new indexes for the Saudi equity market.

Development of the Middle Eastern capital markets and satisfying the investment, portfolio benchmarking and trading needs of local and international investors is part of the long-term business goals of S&P's.

The agreement authorises S & P's to use real-time Tadawul market data and information to create indices measuring the performance of the Saudi stock market. These will serve as a basis for third-party index-linked products.

In 2008 S & P's became the first global index provider to offer investors seven-day calculations on its conventional and Shariah indexes covering Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Co-operation Council markets.

The company has expanded S&P MENA index family in June launching five size splits: largecap, midcap, smallcap, largemidcap and midsmallcap. These covered 11 major markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.