Nations return to Saudi money event
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — World leaders and business executives converged upon the palatial Ritz-Carlton hotel on Tuesday, putting concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in the 2018 murder of a dissident journalist behind them and returning unabashedly to deal-making.
The brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, prompted many companies and executives to shun Saudi Arabia’s annual investment conference last year. But the Riyadh event was again teeming with the global elite this week as the conference opened with a clear message: Saudi Arabia is open for business.
Throughout the day, attendees whispered to each other about the possibility of the biggest deal of all: that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would emerge to announce that stateowned oil giant Saudi Aramco would move ahead with an initial public offering as soon as next week.
The three-day gathering began with a splash. Waving white robots greeted guests from 30 countries who streamed into a ballroom where break dancers clad in neon flashed across a stage. Organizers of the event, which is produced by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, said that 6,000 people registered to participate — double the attendance from 2017, according to the fund.
“It’s always great to be in the kingdom,” Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock who backed out of last year’s event, said during an opening panel discussion.
Fink was joined by corporate titans such as Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chief executive; Thomas J. Barrack Jr., founder of Colony Capital; Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates; and Michael L. Corbat, head of Citigroup. None of the executives attended last year.
The Trump administration, which boycotted the event last year, was also well represented. In attendance was Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law; Rick Perry, the outgoing energy secretary; and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who will speak Wednesday. Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed spoke by telephone ahead of the conference, according to the White House, which said the two leaders discussed the killing of Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, the Islamic State leader, and the “continued strong partnership” between the two countries.
Others that scorned Saudi Arabia last year reemerged. The chief executive of Virgin Hyperloop One, a futuristic transportation startup, closely associated with Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur, pulled out last year after Branson criticized the kingdom and suspended two projects he was working on there. This year, however, Virgin Hyperloop One was back and even installed a jumbotron-style display of the project outside the main conference hall.
The Los Angeles-based company, which aims to build transport systems in tubes with speeds up to 600 mph, sees Saudi Arabia as a potential major test site and backer, according to Josh Giegel, its co-founder and chief technology officer.
Many of the people attending the conference this year are venture capitalists and money managers, hoping to meet new clients and partners and tap sources of new cash. Over a lunch of Arab salads, shrimp and smoked salmon, a group of these financiers said they were mainly here to network.
But they also wanted to find out more about the status of Aramco and what led to SoftBank’s bailout of WeWork, the office space company that SoftBank was already invested in through a fund that is largely backed by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Much of SoftBank’s original capital in WeWork is from the SoftBank Vision Fund, which is largely backed by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
The Public Investment Fund, which is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, took careful measures to avoid backlash this year, keeping the conference agenda off its website until the last minute so that speakers would not be made public and scared off.
Some of those who did reverse course and attend this year drew criticism for doing so.
The former World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, withdrew from attending in 2018 but his successor, David Malpass, participated in a panel Tuesday. That struck some in the development world as a curious decision.
“I’m not sure what has changed since last year when the World Bank and the world community said we are not gong to be a party to corruption, harassment of dissidents and to extrajudicial killings,” said Paul Cadario, a former World Bank senior manager and fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School.