Riyadh to host ‘Davos in the desert’ despite slew of pullouts

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will host a key investment summit tomorrow, overshadowed by the killing of critic Jamal Khashoggi that has prompted a wave of policymakers and corporate giants to withdraw.

Just ahead of the three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII), dubbed “Davos in the desert”, the kingdom sought to defuse the crisis with an about-face admission on Saturday that the journalist died in its consulate in Istanbul.

But that has failed to stem an exodus from the summit, whose organisers have taken down a list of speakers from its website.

Dozens of executives – from bankers JP Morgan to carmaker Ford and ride-hailing app Uber – scrapped plans to attend.

Media powerhouses like Bloomberg, CNN and the Financial Times have also pulled out. New Zealand said yesterday it would not attend while Australia withdrew its representatives on Saturday.

On Saturday, organisers said more than 120 speakers and moderators would participate. Last Monday, they had listed more than 150 speakers.

The event seeks to project the historically insular kingdom as a lucrative business destination, in a bid to diversify its oil-reliant economy and set the stage for new ventures and multi-billion dollar contracts.

At last year’s inaugural FII, Crown Prince Mohammed Salman was lionised as a visionary as he wowed investors with talking robots and plans for a futuristic mega-city called NEOM.

Billed last year as an economic coming-out party for the conservative petro-state, the FII has now come to symbolise global outrage over the silencing of critics.

The prince faces what the risk consultancy Eurasia Group calls “an acute public relations crisis.”

Many Western firms have too much at stake to abandon the Arab world’s biggest economy, and many are preparing to send lower-level executives to the summit.

Senior investment bankers from HSBC and Credit Suisse are planning to attend the conference even though their chief executives have cancelled their attendance, Bloomberg News reported.

Companies from China and Russia had shown little interest in withdrawing from the event, said an organiser.