Saudi Arabia's stock market regulator on Wednesday suspended trading in one of the country's major telecommunication firms, Etihad Etisalat, after the company reported losses of $243 million last year.
The firm, known as Mobily, is a unit of United Arab Emirates giant Etisalat, AFP reported.
The suspension will run "until Mobily discusses the reasons that led to a net loss amounting to 913 million riyals", after having earlier reported a preliminary net profit of 220 million riyals for the 12 months to December 31, the capital market authority said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
The main Saudi stock index inched down 0.1 percent as two other mobile operators, Saudi Telecom and Zain Saudi, fell 1.1 and 0.7 percent respectively.
Etihad Etisalat, meanwhile, announced that its chief executive officer, Khalid Omar al-Kaf, had been removed, according to a report by Bloomberg.
He had been suspended since November after the discovery of accounting errors
