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Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has cut its share of foreign investments to around 10,000, in a break from the multibillion-dollar global spending surge of the past decade as it refocuses efforts to revitalize the country’s economy. The plan is to reduce the size by one-third.
The Public Investment Fund, which has assets worth about $930 billion, said it intends to reduce the proportion of money invested overseas from 30% to 18-20%.
“Therefore, initially there was less than 2% of international investment. Most of the investment was in development projects within the Saudi economy,” PIF President Yasir Al-Rumayyan said at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Riyadh on Tuesday. spoke.
“But then it went from 2% to 30%. Our goal now is to get that down to the 18-20% range.”
PIF has attracted a series of attentions as it seeks to rapidly expand its external exposure from virtually nothing, including injecting $45 billion into SoftBank’s Vision Fund in 2016 and $20 billion into Blackstone Infrastructure Fund the following year. It attracted attention for its sophisticated transactions.
The fund has also financed splashy acquisitions including Newcastle United Football Club and ventures such as the LIV Golf Pro Tour.
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The PIF is at the heart of a major plan launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to diversify the Saudi economy away from its dependence on oil revenues.
Rumayan said international investors who previously sought funding from PIFs are also changing their approach.
“We are more focused on the domestic economy and have achieved and done so many great things,” he said. “We’re going to see a shift from people wanting us to invest or using our money to invest to people looking to co-invest.”
