PIF’s Al-Rumayyan, Mubadala’s Al Mubarak lead fans from Gulf at FIFA World Cup final

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chief of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala sovereign wealth fund, were among the Gulf business figures who stood out at the FIFA World Cup final.

Al-Rumayyan, who is also Chairman of the U.K.’s Newcastle United football club, mounted the podium beside U.S. President Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino and took part in the trophy ceremony on Sunday after Spain’s 1-0 victory over Argentina.

Al Mubarak, Mubadala’s Group CEO and Chairman of the Manchester City football club, attended the match at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., and was also spotted at Fanatics Fest, a raucous four-day gathering for sports fans at New York’s Javits Center.

He and his brother, Mohamed Al Mubarak, Chairman of both Aldar Properties and the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, were photographed with billionaire Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, who posted the shot on Instagram.

UAE leaders also seen at the World Cup final included Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, Head of the International Affairs Office at the UAE Presidential Court; Sayd Basar Shueb, CEO of International Holding Co.; Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation and Vice Chairman of the Dubai Sports Council; and Fouad Darwish, CEO of Palms Sport.

FII names Princess Maha bint Mishari as CEO, alongside Attias

Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative Institute appointed Princess Dr. Maha bint Mishari as its CEO, putting her in charge of the kingdom’s annual business conference that’s become a magnet for bankers and corporate executives from around the world.

Princess Maha, a physician and Vice President of External Relations and Advancement at Riyadh’s Alfaisal University, will replace Richard Attias, the Moroccan-born impresario who founded the FII conference in 2019 and will continue as Chairman of the FII Institute.

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund and current Chairman of the FII Institute, said in a statement that he expects Princess Maha to strengthen the organization’s role “as a catalyst for investment, ideas, and solutions that serve humanity.”

Next week, Princess Maha will deliver her first address as CEO at the FII PRIORITY Europe 2026 Summit in Rome, one of several regional conferences that have been spun off from the Riyadh gathering.

“I look forward to working with the Board of Trustees, the Executive Committee, our partners and our talented team to further advance our mission and create meaningful impact for future generations,” Princess Maha said.

Saudi investor summit opens in Miami with Iran war in focus

Saudi Arabia’s FII Priority Summit opened its formal proceedings in Miami on Thursday, with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Investment Fund, set to deliver the keynote address to the gathering of global investors and policymakers.

With U.S. President Donald Trump due to speak on Friday, the conference takes place against the backdrop of war in the Middle East and the disruption of global energy markets following Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Among speakers appearing on Wednesday are Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, and Khalid Al-Falih, the Minister of State who formerly served as Investment Minister.

The lineup includes Dina Powell McCormick, the newly appointed President and Vice Chairman of Meta, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, AI leader Fei-Fei Li of Stanford University, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.

Also scheduled to address the gathering are White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, White House advisors Jared Kushner and Massad Boulos, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, real estate developer Stephen Ross and FIFA head Gianni Infantino.

Before the main sessions, the FII Priority summit on Wednesday focused on Latin America, highlighting the region’s growing importance in global capital flows. The program featured Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodriguez since the U.S. abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. Rodrigues spoke remotely and expressed hope the country will draw more international investors.

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.

U.S. deregulation will bring more Saudi funds, PIF chief says

Saudi Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan says the U.S. needs to cut red tape if it wants more investment from the Gulf kingdom.

Wrapping up the PIF’s FII Priority Summit in Miami Beach on Friday, Al-Rumayyan noted that 40% of the sovereign wealth fund’s current foreign investments are in American companies.

“It could have been much more,” the PIF chief said, pointing to a series of U.S. regulatory rules he described as barriers.

“I hope with the current administration, these restrictions [will] be ironed out and it will attract more investment back to the U.S.”

The three-day conference opened with a speech by President Donald Trump, who said he wants Saudi Arabia to invest $1 trillion in the U.S. over the next four years – a response to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pledge to invest $600 billion.

PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan sits with Trump, Musk at UFC 309 matches

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, sat with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk in ringside seats at the United Fighting Championship’s UFC 309 event on Saturday night in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Al-Rumayyan, who is also Chairman of Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, as well as the PIF-owned LIV Golf tournament and English football club Newcastle, showed up in a photo posted on Musk’s X social media platform, chatting with fellow golf lover Trump while watching the fights.

Al-Rumayyan has been negotiating for the past two years over a proposed merger with the PGA golf tour after luring some of the top professional golfers with paychecks of over $200 million. The two sides, along with Europe’s DP World Tour, reached a framework merger agreement in June 2023 that has yet to be finalized.

The former President’s Trump National Golf Club in Bedminister, N.J., hosted LIV Golf tournaments in 2022 and 2023.

Saudi PIF signs pacts worth $50 billion with China finance groups

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is putting its $925 billion in assets to work in China.

Following a trip to Beijing last month by a delegation of Saudi executives led by PIF Governor Yasir Al Rumayyan, the sovereign wealth fund corralled preliminary agreements worth $50 billion with six major Chinese financial institutions.

Besides a series of deals focused on renewable energy and steel manufacturing that were already disclosed, the PIF said in a statement on Thursday that it signed the memorandums of understanding with the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, China Export and Credit Insurance Corp., the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

The new agreements “demonstrate the PIF’s strong and deepening relationships with leading financial institutions and accentuate PIF’s commitment to enhancing partnerships globally,” Fahad Al Saif, the fund’s Head of Global Capital Finance, said in the statement.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf states have been engaged in a delicate balancing act of strengthening commercial ties with China, the world’s second-biggest economy, while steering clear of U.S. efforts to restrict Chinese access to cutting-edge technology in artificial intelligence and other competitive fields.