Mohammed bin Salman: The new face of Saudi Arabia

Under the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, the kingdom has pursued ambitious reforms to transform itself into a thriving 21st-century economy

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends a “coffee ceremony” with visiting U.S. President Donald Trump
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Has the country really changed?

Yes, in important ways, Saudi Arabia has changed radically in the ten years since King Salman ascended the throne aged 79, and his son, Mohammed bin Salman (who is known as MBS), became the country’s de facto ruler (as crown prince from 2017 onwards). Ten years ago, women were still shut out of the labour market and public life, prohibited from driving or even leaving the house without a male guardian. Today, they are free to work and travel where they like. Many have ditched the burqa for a simple headscarf. The religious police and “vice squad”, once a ubiquitous presence, have disappeared. Schools have slashed the amount of time devoted to religious instruction. What was once a closed and repressive society has opened up in myriad ways and become far more akin to other Gulf and Middle Eastern states.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.