Citi’s Jane Fraser sees Gulf states driving decade of Mideast growth

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser sees the Gulf states sparking explosive growth in coming years across the region.

“The Middle East is probably on a rip for the next decade or so in terms of how much investment and new industries, new clients are coming in,” Fraser told Bloomberg in an interview today while visiting Dubai.

She highlighted the region’s expanding links with India and China as a powerful draw for global financial institutions like Citi, which has been building up operations alongside rivals such as Jefferies, Lazard, and JPMorgan.

With governments accelerating privatizations and encouraging stock listings, Fraser also pointed to the Gulf as a global hotspot for IPOs, which have raised more than $5 billion this year.

MBS tells Trump in Riyadh he’ll try to invest $1 trillion in U.S.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told President Donald Trump and a solid portion of the world’s business elite on Tuesday that he hopes to fulfill his pledge to invest $600 billion in the U.S. and might even hit the $1 trillion mark sought by the White House.

In turn, Trump praised MBS as a visionary leader and hailed the U.S.-Saudi alliance as a profitable enterprise for both sides as the two spoke at a business conference in Riyadh and the president kicked off a four-day swing through the Gulf that will also take him to Qatar and the UAE.

“Today we hope for investment opportunities worth $600 billion, including deals worth $300 billion that were signed during this forum,” the Saudi leader said in a speech at the capital city’s King Abdulaziz International Conference Center. “We will work in the coming months on the second phase to complete deals and raise it to $1 trillion,” he said.

A good chunk of that commitment will come from an agreement to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142 billion, which the White House called “the largest defense cooperation agreement” that the U.S. has ever signed.

Trump beamed as he followed MBS onstage to address an audience that included Tesla founder Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, Saudi Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan and hundreds of other corporate leaders, investors and government officials from the two countries.

The President thanked MBS for setting the $1 trillion goal and talked for close to an hour about his affection for the kingdom, ticking off several of the deals signed by the two countries during the day.

“So, number one, I like visiting with you, and we’ve known each other very well, and I really believe we like each other a lot and, number two, for the United States, we’ve brought tremendous investment in and tremendous jobs, and we continue to service your great country very well,” Trump said.

The U.S. leader also said he maintains a “fervent hope” that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords to normalize relations with Israel, as the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco did in 2020, though he added, “you’ll do it in your own time.”

Earlier in the day, the Saudi Crown Prince took the unusual step of greeting Trump in person when the president landed on a flight from Washington at King Khalid International Airport outside Riyadh.

Unlike former President Joe Biden’s tense visit and cautious fist bump in 2022, MBS stood on the tarmac and patiently watched Trump descend from Air Force One onto a royal purple carpet. The two shook hands and Trump gave the prince a warm shoulder tap before they strode together to the waiting motorcade.

The greeting underlined the intentions on both sides to make Trump’s first regional trip in his second term a public success and broadcast the closeness of the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

Inside the Al-Yamamah Palace where a lavish reception and lunch were held, both leaders were accompanied by top Cabinet ministers and a roster of business leaders, with Trump’s entourage including Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Conversations at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum – held at the same site beside the marble-lined Ritz-Carlton Hotel as the annual Future Investment Initiative conference – were focused on concrete dealmaking and illustrated the seriousness in both countries to make the most of the rare event, said Tally Zingher, Managing Director of the U.S.-headquartered boutique advisory firm Blue Laurel.

“Being here allows me to listen and observe firsthand how the Saudis are articulating their priorities and how those priorities have already manifested into concrete opportunities for U.S. companies,” Zingher told The Circuit.

Among the headliners addressing the conference were Khalid Bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih, Minister of Investment; Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Minister of Finance; Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Minister of Energy; Bandar Alkhorayef, Minister of Industry and Minerals and Faisal Alibrahim, Minister of Economy & Planning.

The U.S. delegation was headed by Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury; Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Commerce; and David Sacks, the White House Special Advisor on AI and Crypto.

From the Saudi business world, the conference featured Muhammad Al Jasser, Chairman, Islamic Development Bank; Nabeel Koshak, CEO of Saudi Venture Capital; Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO of Lucid; John Pagano, Group CEO of Red Sea Global; Mohammad Abunayyan, Chairman of ACWA Power; Tony Douglas, CEO of Riyadh Air and Jerry Inzerillo, Group CEO of Diriyah Co.

U.S. financiers at the forum included Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, LionTree’s Aryeh Bourkoff and BDT & MSD Partners’ Dina Powell McCormick.

From the U.S. tech industry, Palantir’s Alex Karp joined the forum as well as Alphabet/Google’s Ruth Porat, Amazon’s Andy Jassy, IBM’s Arvind Krishna and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon.

With planemakers and defense contractors set to reap billions in Saudi deals, the conference featured Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, Lockheed Martin’s Michael Williamson, Honeywell’s Ken West and Halliburton’s Jeff Miller.

Among other speakers at the summit, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is a perennial fixture at the FII conference and hosted a spinoff conference in his city last February, where Trump spoke. Also appearing was Gianni Infantino, President of world soccer’s governing FIFA organization, after Saudi Arabia was picked to host the 2034 World Cup.

Trump’s Saudi trip will also draw CEOs from BlackRock, Palantir

Some of America’s top corporate executives, including BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser and Palantir’s Alex Karp, will be following U.S. President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia next week.

The three business leaders are scheduled to speak at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh that is being put together to coincide with Trump’s arrival in the kingdom on May 13, when he kicks off a tour of the Gulf that will also take him to Qatar and the UAE.

Other U.S. executives slated to appear are Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, Franklin Templeton’s Jenny Johnson, Alphabet’s Ruth Porat, IBM’s Arvind Krishna and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon.

Trump, who will meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when he arrives in Riyadh, said he anticipates completing major arms deals in the kingdom and will seek to obtain a Saudi commitment to invest as much as $1 trillion in the U.S. The Crown Prince offered $600 billion.

The business event will take place at the vast King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in the capital city’s diplomatic quarter, where the annual Future Investment Initiative gathering is held, alongside the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The event is being sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, along with Aramco, Maaden and other state-owned companies.

Greeting participants in the conference will be top Saudi Cabinet members, including Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Minister of Energy; Khalid Al-Falih, the Minister of Investment; Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Minister of Finance; Bandar Alkhorayef, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources; and Amin Nasser, CEO of Aramco.

Rate cut timing top of mind as financial elite gather from Dubai to Beverly Hills

From Dubai to Beverly Hills, the question occupying the world’s financial elite is this: when will the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates?

Not till September at the earliest, says hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, who addressed the Milken Institute Annual Conference at The Beverly Hilton on Monday. Yie-Hsin Hung, CEO of State Street Global Advisors, sees rate cuts happening sooner: she predicted that the Fed will start to reduce rates as soon as July amid a more muted economy, speaking this morning at Day 2 of the Dubai FinTech Summit. 

The market-moving question is top of mind, but so too is the Gulf’s growth story amid the energy transition. “We’re known as oil exporters, but our second biggest export is capital,” Mohammed El-Kuwaiz, Chair of the Board of the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia said at Milken on Monday, fielding questions from The Economist’s Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes. 

“For the first time in our history we may be capital importers,” El-Kuwaiz predicted, as the kingdom looks to lure foreign capital to help fuel the $3 trillion of investment from now until 2030 for its economic diversification drive.

The money is being poured into developing sectors like tourism, manufacturing and tech alongside mega-projects like NEOM.

“The capital markets are an extremely important fulcrum” at this time and why Saudi has opened up to the world and cracked into the top 10 capital markets, he said. El-Kuwaiz shared the stage with Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup; Harvey Schwartz, CEO of Carlyle; and Ron O’Hanley, Chair and CEO of State Street.

Back in Dubai, non-oil growth was top of the agenda for UAE Minister of Economy Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri. Speaking at the Dubai Fintech Summit, he repeated his belief in 7% annual GDP growth, but said that 4.9% non-oil growth is possible in 2024.

“We see growth away from traditional economies such as real estate and tourism to new types of tourism, such as sustainable tourism, health tech. We’re looking into AI, generative AI, the UAE is becoming the capital of AI,” he said.