Mideast leaders head for global talkfest in snowbound Davos

Headliners to include Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Aljada, Mubadala CEO Khaldoon Al Mubarak – Donald Trump via video

Gulf business leaders and cabinet ministers will be jetting into snowy Davos, Switzerland, for next week’s World Economic Forum, where discussions will touch on Middle East reconstruction and focus on what to expect as Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Trump himself will address the gathering of the world’s financial elite by video on Thursday, Jan. 23, just three days after his inauguration, with 3,000 participants from more than 130 countries registered to attend the WEF events in person.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Group CEO of the UAE’s Mubadala sovereign wealth fund, a member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Chairman of the Manchester City Football Club, will take the stage on Tuesday in a panel discussion about “Finding Growth in Uncertain Times.”

He’ll be chatting in the half-hour session with Carlyle Co-Chairman David Rubinstein; Marcus Wallenberg, Chairman of SEB, Sweden’s largest lender; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization; and WEF President Børge Brende.
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Later on Tuesday, Brende will hold a public conversation with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is playing a central role in negotiations for the ceasefire agreement in Gaza. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, meanwhile, will be interviewed by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

Saudi Arabia, which has rented multiple storefronts on Davos’ central street, the Promenade, to promote its $1.5 trillion Neom megaproject, will be bringing a bevy of key cabinet ministers to the forum.

On Thursday, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Aljadaan and Economy and Planning Minister Faisal Alibrahim will be chatting on stage with BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

Also participating in the session will be Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah AlSwaha.

Saudi Arabia has patterned its own annual business forum after the Swiss gathering, establishing the Future Investment Initiative conference in 2017 that was immediately dubbed “Davos in the Desert.”

At its eighth edition last October, some 7,000 movers and shakers poured into Riyadh for the get-together that takes place at the opulent Ritz Carlton hotel and in the vast halls of the adjacent King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center.

Getting a jump on the confab, the developers of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar-plus Neom project invited a select group of financiers, celebrities and influencers to a kickoff event at Sindalah Island, five kilometers off the kingdom’s west coast.

The Red Sea resort island, where an ecosystem is rising of super-luxury hotels, swank night clubs and an 86-berth yacht marina, hosted a beach party headlined by Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys. She sang to an audience that included actor Will Smith, tennis champ Rafael Nidal and former NFL quarterback Tom Brady.

Back in the capital, FII featured a bevy of investment bankers, hedge fund founders and corporate titans who are veterans of Davos and have become regulars at the Saudi conference, showcasing its aspirations for global influence.

Among the speakers on the main stage were bankers Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock; Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreesen Horowitz Jane Fraser, CEO of Citi; Ken Griffin, Founder and CEO of Citadel. Others included Dame Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange; Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet and Google; and Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreesen Horowitz.
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The three-day event was introduced by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is Governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Chairman of Aramco. Richard Attias, who hosts and produces the Saudi conference as CEO of the FII Institute, was earlier in his career producer of the WEF conference in Davos.

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