The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a speech by its executive director of markets and international, Sarah Pritchard, in which she discussed aspects of the FCA’s competitiveness objective. Pritchard covers the FCA’s authorisation processes, international co-operation, the need to maintain trust in regulatory frameworks, the Edinburgh reforms and the role of digital sandboxes.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a corporate governance regime in the United States, which set new or enhanced standards for public company boards, management and public accounting firms (including overseas firms with a primary or secondary listing in the US).

The Bank of England (BoE) has published a speech by Sasha Mills, Executive Director for Financial Market Infrastructure, delivered at the UK Finance Digital Innovation Summit 2025. In her address, Mills sets out the BoE’s vision for a digital financial system that supports innovation through technologies such as tokenisation and distributed ledger technology (DLT), while continuing to operate alongside existing systems. She emphasises the importance of building a mixed ecosystem that maintains financial stability, ensures regulatory clarity, and enables interoperability between new and legacy infrastructure.

The gift of a thing with the intention that it shall be taken either wholly or in part satisfaction of some prior claim of the donee.

The Sale of Goods Act 1979, s 14(2) implies a term into a sale contract (in the course of a business) that the goods are of satisfactory quality. This includes fitness for purpose, freedom from minor defects, appearance and finish, durability and safety.

1. What is the applicable legislation? On 11 August 2025, the Saudi legislator issued the Saudi Investment Law 2024. The Investment Law 2024 entered into force on 7 February 2025 and replaced Royal Decree M1/1421H on Foreign Investment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Foreign Investment Law 2000). Unlike the Foreign Investment Law 2000, which only applied foreign investment, the Investment Law 2024 addresses both foreign and domestic investment in the Kingdom. The Executive Regulations to the Investment Law 2024 were issued in February 2025 (Executive Regulations 2025). Still, questions remain as to how expansive the scope of the FDI regime established by the Investment Law 2024 will be. The Foreign Investment Law established a traditional FDI regime that relied predominantly on providing incentives for foreign investment in some sectors and restricting or prohibiting engagement of foreign investors in others to steer FDI. The Investment Law 2024 includes language that could be the basis for an FDI review process similar to those, for example, in the US or Europe being implemented in Saudi Arabia. The Executive

NOTE—to see whether notification thresholds in Saudi Arabia and throughout the world are met, see Where to Notify. 1. Have there been any recent developments regarding the Saudi merger control regime and are any updates/developments expected in the coming year? Are there any other ‘hot’ merger control issues in Saudi Arabia? The most significant recent amendment to the Saudi merger control regime was the shift of the Saudi merger control regime from market share to turnover —based notification thresholds introduced with Royal Decree M/75 of 29/6/1440H, which was published in the Saudi Arabian Official Gazette on 29 March 2019 (Competition Law 2019) and the Executive (Implementing) Regulations to the Saudi Competition Law issued by Royal Decree No. M/75 of 29/6/1440H (corresponding to 6 March 2019) were adopted by Board Decision No. 337 dated 25/01/1441H (24 September 2019) (Executive Regulations 2019). Both the Competition Law 2019 and the Executive Regulations 2019 came into effect at the end of September 2019. Following the changes introduced by the Competition Law 2019 and the Executive Regulations 2019,

Law360, London: Saudi Arabia must pay more than £3m in damages to a human rights activist critical of the government for 'the most acute intrusion' of his private life, involving phone hacking and a targeted assault, a London court ordered on 26 January 2026.

The National Competitiveness Center has published a draft arbitration law for public consultation, with submissions due by 24 October 2025. The proposed legislation aims to update Saudi Arabia's legal framework for arbitration to align with global trends and strengthen dispute resolution infrastructure, particularly for commercial disputes. The draft law comprises nine chapters covering arbitration provisions, agreements, tribunals, jurisdiction, procedures, awards, appeals, enforcement and final provisions. The consultation, which began on 24 September 2025, has already received 117 comments and forms part of efforts to improve the Kingdom's international arbitration indicators.

Saudi Arabia’s National Competitiveness Center (NCC) has launched a public consultation, running from 24 September to 24 October 2025, on a new arbitration system aimed at modernizing and strengthening the Kingdom’s dispute resolution framework. Part of ongoing Vision 2030 reforms, the nine-chapter draft addresses key areas such as arbitration agreements, tribunal composition, procedures, award issuance, enforcement and final provisions. The initiative seeks to align Saudi Arabia’s arbitration regime with international standards, enhancing transparency, efficiency and autonomy while boosting the Kingdom’s attractiveness as a global commercial hub and improving its international competitiveness indicators.

Law360: An Employment Tribunal has ruled that Saudi Arabia's UK embassy harassed a post room clerk over her Catholic beliefs and suggested she convert to Islam.

Loan market and developments Please provide a brief overview of the current state of the loan markets in your jurisdiction and any significant recent market developments. The Saudi market is currently less exposed to issues affecting lenders elsewhere in the world, in part due to its implementation of key elements of Basel III, which include leverage, liquidity and capital adequacy ratios which are being closely monitored by the country’s banking regulator, the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). Other reasons could be that lending is not credit based but tends to be heavily dependent upon the provision of security. Whatever the reasons, the Saudi market remains extremely buoyant with increased investment both internally as well as inwardly from abroad. A wide variety of credit and loans, from commercial bank loans offering low rates to both personal and corporate borrowers, to medium to long term loans from institutions such as the Islamic Development Bank and Saudi Industrial Development Fund, are readily available. The growth in corporate lending comes as a result of a push towards economic