| Headline: Banks gear up for retail competition Source: Euromoney Date: September 2001
“The banking sector is coming out of a phase, which has lasted slightly more than a year, when there was a lot of liquidity and not much action on the assets side. We are beginning to get into a situation where the demand for funding is picking up from both corporate and personal customers,” says Mike de Graffenried, managing director of Saudi American Bank (SAMBA). The 10 commercial banks in the kingdom are well placed to meet this demand. They are well regulated, among the best capitalized in the developing world, very liquid and profitable. And they have spent the past two years modernizing their internal systems and structures. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||