In the months before Mohammed bin Salman celebrated his 30th birthday nearly a decade ago, the yet-to-be anointed Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was gifted a vital key to unlocking the kingdom’s future: full purview of its Public Investment Fund.
Back in 2015, MBS became chairman of the sovereign wealth fund established in 1971 by a former king at a time when it was ready to be transformed. A slow-moving cog of the state no more, PIF was ready to become an investment juggernaut with global presence.
It’s a task the fast-rising royal hasn’t shied away from. PIF, officially led by governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, has been stepping up its mission to invest in high-profile assets globally in recent years to help fulfill its mission of reducing Saudi Arabia’s economic dependence on oil.
That mission, a fundamental part of an ambitious program called Vision 2030 that MBS is in charge of, depends in part on how successful the PIF is in generating returns from its big bets overseas — and leveraging those bets to build hot new industries at home.
“MBS’ personal ambition is very much to make Saudi Arabia a highly visible and internationally respected post-oil economy,” Steffen Hertog, associate professor at the London School of Economics, told Business Insider. “The PIF is by far his most important vehicle in this endeavor.”
But as PIF spreads its wings, it is becoming increasingly unclear as to just how successful it stands to be beyond the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia goes global
A look at the PIF’s portfolio presents a show reel of some of the most prolific names in global business.
In the tech sector, it has pumped $3.5 billion into Uber, poured $45 billion into SoftBank’s Vision Fund, taken a 60% stake in Tesla rival Lucid, and become majority owner of augmented reality startup Magic Leap.
Beyond that, it has pumped billions of dollars into LIV Golf, led a $415 million takeover of Newcastle United, backed up a Blackstone infrastructure fund with $20 billion and invested in Carnival, the world’s biggest cruise operator. In June, PIF expanded its stake in London’s Heathrow Airport.
Figures published in July by GlobalSWF, a data firm tracking sovereign-wealth-fund activity, found that PIF deployed more capital in the first half of 2024 than all other state-owned investors, which collectively invested close to $100 billion in the six-month period.
According to LSE’s Hertog, PIF’s attraction to high-profile brands isn’t just about making itself more visible to the West. “These for the most part are corporates active in sectors that the PIF and MBS see as key for Saudi Arabia’s domestic economic diversification.”
To make these deals happen, the kingdom has been busy doing a lot of courting.
In February, it backed a two-day conference in Miami, where the likes of Blackstone leader Stephen Schwarzman and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were billed as speakers. In October, the kingdom will be prepared for the global elite to descend on capital city Riyadh for its “Davos in the desert” investment conference​​.
The event, which has previously attracted the likes of JP Morgan and BlackRock CEOs Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink, has proven controversial in the past. MBS’s alleged role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which he denies having involvement in, gave some dealmakers pause for thought.
That said, the world’s corporate elite appear to be looking past the incident as time passes — something the Saudis seem to be aware of. This year’s theme, “Infinite Horizons,” offers a nod to the global scope it has in mind for its future.
For global companies, fund managers, and bankers, Saudi Arabia’s wealth has been a big draw at a critical time. While other investors have exercised caution in the face of a higher interest rate environment, the kingdom has kept its money flowing.
That’s partly because the fund has set a target of $2 trillion in assets under management by the end of the decade, and is racing against the clock to meet the deadline for its ambitious Vision 2030 program.
Saudi Arabia also finds itself locked in a tense rivalry with other economic powerhouses in the region such as the United Arab Emirates, where funds such as Mubadala and G42 have been busy securing their own big international deals. Bragging rights are on the table.
Risky high-stakes game
However, while the Saudis prepare to continue flashing their cash abroad, the PIF faces some risks.
For one, the fund has had to learn the hard reality of going big, as a number of its high-profile investments overseas have struggled financially. Earlier this month, for instance, PIF had to plug a funding gap for Lucid by pumping in an extra $1.5 billion.
The electric vehicle maker first raised more than $1 billion from the Saudis in 2018 after PIF’s talks with Elon Musk to take Tesla private fell through, but has struggled with a high burn rate and waning demand for EVs.
PIF has also had to backstop another company. According to filings released in the UK this month, the fund has put $750 million into Magic Leap since the start of 2023, as it struggling to take its immersive reality headsets mainstream.
For Hertog, though companies like Lucid have “fallen on hard times” — and other bets from PIF on the likes of the SoftBank Vision Fund have “indeed not done well” — it is still too early to say how the overall performance will turn out. The fund did swing to an annual profit in 2023 following an $11 billion loss the previous year, Bloomberg reported, though many bets are still in their early days.
“There are inherent risks in investing in new sectors so what matters is not individual failures but the performance of the whole portfolio,” Hertog said.
PIF’s tanglings with political figures are also raising concerns. Donald Trump’s son-in-law Kushner, who started private equity firm Affinity Partners in 2021, received a $2 billion commitment from PIF for its debut fund, with that commitment now facing an investigation by Senate Finance Committee chair Sen. Ron Wyden.
In a letter published in June, the senator raised concerns that PIF and other Middle Eastern funds were “using payments to Affinity executives as a means to influence Kushner and other politically powerful individuals.”
For Abdullah Alaoudh, a director at the Middle East Democracy Center, it seems clear that buying “a lot of influence” — or “whitewashing” as he puts it — is a key part of the fund’s dealmaking overseas. If potential partners can gloss over some of its more controversial activities, such as the Kingdom’s war in Yemen, it’ll have an easier time seeing deals through.
As Hertog notes, it’s worth remembering that PIF’s main priority remains its domestic portfolio. “While some domestic investments have been pruned, the fund’s main ambition is domestic diversification,” he said.
Still, Saudi Arabia seems intent on making its mark on the global stage through the PIF. The world will be keeping watch.
The PIF did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
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