A few years from now, an American executive flying into Saudi Arabia could disembark from an airline founded by its sovereign wealth fund and order an Uber, a company in which the same fund owns a 4% stake. Whisked across the capital, the executive might check into a boutique hotel in a former palace, also owned by the Public Investment Fund.
Attending the PIF's annual conference, they could sip coffee farmed through a venture led by the fund, then sign a deal with a PIF-owned defense firm. That evening, the executive might catch dinner and a movie at a complex developed by its entertainment arm, flying home without touching a single business not linked to the PIF.
As Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman races to diversify Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy, the $620 billion PIF - which he chairs - is taking center stage, supplanting a pedigreed business class to become one of the most powerful institutions in a fast-changing economy.
Receding is the conservative Islamic kingdom of old, which lived off its oil revenues while cautiously investing in safe US treasuries and disbursing lucrative state contracts. This is Saudi Inc. And its self-styled Founder is ripping up the rule book.
In the space of five years, the PIF's become a major international investor, snapping up US blue chips like Uber and investing in electric cars. It's also made forays into sports, buying UK soccer team Newcastle United and investing $200 million in an international golf venture.
That's given MBS, as the de facto ruler is known, more clout on the international stage, with Western officials looking to the world's biggest oil exporter to help temper raging inflation and pour petrodollars into a sputtering world economy. US President Joe Biden will visit Riyadh mid-July, forced to rethink his promise to turn MBS into a "pariah" over the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
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