Trump headlines FII Miami, pitching U.S. to Saudi investors
President Donald Trump headlines Saudi Arabia’s FII Priority Summit in Miami today, pitching international investors on American business while the Iran war roils markets around the world.
The three-day conference, sponsored by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, drew its usual bevy of Wall Street bankers, who listened to Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan warning about the impact of escalating geopolitical tensions.
“What we’ve seen in the last few weeks is an impact beyond what we have seen even post-Covid in terms of supply chain disruption,” Al Jadaan said. “We really need to make sure we resolve the conflict very quickly.”
The PIF, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, indicated it will keep investing globally despite the Iran war, with Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan telling the conference that the kingdom’s financial position is solid.
“The Saudi macroeconomic and physical position remains strong, stable and resilient… We measure our returns not in quarters but in decades, and PIF remains committed to its investments around the world,” Al Rummayan said.
Among the conference’s other speakers on Thursday are Steven Mnuchin, the former U.S. Treasury secretary and founder of Liberty Strategic Capital; Dina Powell McCormick, President and Vice Chairman of Meta; Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of Asset & Wealth Management at JPMorgan Chase; and William E. Ford, Chairman and CEO of General Atlantic.
Before Trump takes the podium at Miami’s Faena Hotel, the conference will hold separate sessions with White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Paramount Skydance’s David Ellison and FIFA head Gianni Infantino.
PIF’s Al-Rumayyan tips Saudi sovereign fund’s new strategy
Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion Public Investment Fund is working on a new game plan aimed at generating greater returns over the next 15 years from the kingdom’s vast sovereign wealth.
In an onstage interview on Monday, PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said the fund will focus on drawing international investors to Saudi Arabia, while pouring the bulk of its money into the country’s ambitious domestic projects, Bloomberg reports.
“In the coming two months or so, we will set the new strategy for the PIF, which is a continuation from the original one, until 2030 and from 2030 all the way to 2040 and beyond,” Al-Rumayyan told interviewer David Rubenstein, the co-founder of Carlyle Group, at the Economic Club of Washington D.C.
Currently, about 80% of the PIF’s capital is invested locally, with a smaller portion deployed internationally. Among the largest recipients of the fund’s money are the kingdom’s megaprojects such as NEOM on the Red Sea coast, the Diriyah historic district in Riyadh and the Qiddiya sports and entertainment district.
“We need to increase and grow our local content and one of the best ways to do so is to get direct foreign investments to the country,” Al-Rumayyan said.
Asked about the PIF’s upstart LIV Golf league, Al-Rumayyan expressed confidence that cooperation will grow with the PGA Tour even though a planned merger between the two has stalled. “I think hopefully in the future we will be able to bring the game of golf together,” he said.
Saudi Aramco execs go on the road to promote share sale
Saudi Aramco executives are traveling this week to recruit international investors for the oil company’s $12 billion secondary offering, a departure from its IPO held five years ago that was marketed primarily to the home crowd.
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser and CFO Ziad Al Murshed will be attending roadshow events in London while others are planning to join presentations in New York, Bloomberg reports.
Institutional investors can submit orders until June 6 for the $1.8 trillion company’s share sale that began the booking process on Sunday and was oversubscribed within hours.
Before Aramco’s $29.4 billion IPO in 2019, overseas investors showed limited interest, leaving the government reliant on local buyers.
The kingdom scrapped a roadshow event in London and decided against presentations in the U.S. and Japan, choosing instead to focus on its enthusiastic domestic audience, who made the IPO the largest in history.
