(Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is seeking to boost returns from its investments as it helps the kingdom reduce reliance on revenue from oil exports.
“We benchmarked ourselves, we went to all the endowments, we went to all the sovereign wealth funds for long-term investments,” Public Investment Fund Managing Director Yasir Alrumayyan said on Tuesday at the Future Investment Initiative, a three-day conference in Riyadh that has gathered some of the finance world’s most influential people. “We are targeting between 8 to 9 percent but in 2025 till 2030.”
Saudi Arabia is stepping up plans to turn its sovereign wealth fund into a global giant. The PIF is central to the government’s effort to diversify its economy away from oil. The kingdom plans to transfer ownership of state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, to the fund, which could eventually control more than $2 trillion, according to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
In May, the PIF agreed to commit $20 billion to an infrastructure investment fund with Blackstone Group LP and to invest as much as $45 billion in a technology fund run by SoftBank. These deals followed a $3.5 billion investment in U.S. ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc. in June 2016.
Domestic Investments
At home, the fund is starting a $500 million energy-efficiency company and built a $2.4 billion stake in a Riyadh-based dairy farm and food processor. It also established a $1.1 billion fund to support small and medium-sized businesses and is spearheading a $4.8 billion project to redevelop the Jeddah waterfront on the Red Sea -- all in the past few months.
The PIF is hosting global finance heads including HSBC Holdings Plc’s Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver, BlackRock Inc. Chairman Larry Fink and Credit Suisse Group CEO Tidjane Thiam for an investment summit.
To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew Martin in Riyadh at mmartin128@bloomberg.net, Arif Sharif in Dubai at asharif2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Dana El Baltaji
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