The board of Saudi Arabia's Alinma Bank recommended a dividend of 0.5 riyal per share for 2014, a bank official said on Thursday.

Earlier, Alinma said in a statement to the Saudi stock exchange that the dividend would be SR5. But a bank official, contacted by telephone, subsequently told Reuters that was wrong and the correct figure was 0.5 riyal.

It would be the bank's first dividend since it listed on the stock market in 2008.

Net profit jumped 29 per cent from a year earlier in the first nine months of this year to SR932 million  ($249 million), with the bank citing growth in core activities and an increase in operating income.-Reuters