Kuwait paves the way for bourse watchdog

* username: rupertbu

It has been a long time coming, but this week Kuwait finally passed a law to establish a Capital Markets Authority to regulate its turbulent stock exchange, the last country in the Gulf to do so.

For decades local and foreign investors have called for a fresh rulebook and regulator for the Kuwait Stock Exchange, the oldest in the region. Market manipulation and insider trading is said to be rife, and minority shareholders have little protection.

Many Kuwaiti investors blame the absence of a regulator for crashes that have wiped out savings several times since the bourse was established in 1962, most notably in the 1982 Soukh Al Manakh stock market collapse.