The discussion revolves around the rebalancing of the global economy and its impact on finance. Cantor emphasizes the alignment of interests between governments, particularly between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, facilitating cross-border activities.
The Crown Prince's Vision 2030 is creating investment opportunities in the region, attracting both domestic and foreign investors. Cantor highlights the increasing interest in cross-border M&A activities.
The speakers discuss the potential for American firms to capitalize on Saudi Arabia's allowance of majority ownership in Tadawal-quoted compani...
Questions asked in this interview
7
0:33Do you see this as deglobalization or is it a rebalancing of capital flows?
1:36Against the benchmark of prosperity which we're talking about here, is this regionalization good or bad for prosperity?
3:31Are these big numbers, the huge numbers we've seen, hundreds of billions of dollars, are these realistically achievable?
4:28How does Moelis help clients navigate this new, rather more difficult environment?
5:46Do you think American firms might take advantage of this?
6:31Is this changing the dynamics of international capital flows?
7:42How are investors and corporates, the people that you deal with, how are they adjusting their strategies to take account for this?
I think there's been a huge alignment of interest between our governments. There's so much opportunity that will come from these partnerships that are being announced that people are starting to think, well, we've got to take care of ourselves first and then continue to access the global opportunities and capital flows.
Eric Cantor is vice chairman and managing director of Moelis & Company, which is a well-known and increasingly influential financial house in the region.
At FII, the buzzword is prosperity and how to increase it. And within the financial industry, there's been a lot of discussion recently about whether we're entering a new era of regionalization in finance. Do you see this as deglobalization or is it a rebalancing of capital flows?
Well, I think you know, so the money follows sort of where the opportunity is. And I do think that we've had sort of a rebalancing of sort of the global economy over the last, you know, five or six years. And what we've seen is increasingly there's been barriers to trade, barriers to investments, more national interest coming to the fore out of the different global players. But I do not say that there has been deglobalization. There's just been a rebalancing and I do think that also applies to the financial world as well. With a lot of opportunity that comes with that rebalancing.
Well, I think from a business standpoint, there is just increasingly opportunities across the world and they're regionalized. If you take, you know, what's going on here in the region, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been first in terms of the vision the crown prince has put forward in Vision 2030. It's been dogged in terms of the execution of Vision 2030. It has created so much opportunity for investors not only here in the region but for investors on the outside and certainly here at Moelis, you know, we are very, very excited about what's going on in the kingdom and about the opportunities that are being brought to our clients both abroad and the domestic clients. And you know, in a way though aligning oneself with the goals of the country here in Saudi Arabia allows for investors, allows for businesses to take advantage of the same opportunity that the government sees.
And I guess the fact that you are an American firm doing big business here in the region is proof that we are not deglobalizing to the extent that some people say.
I just think we are so connected in this world and the rapid evolution, advancement of technology, AI in particular, is going to make it so that we are not going to disconnect. If there are barriers that need to be erected, there will certainly be a lot more easily erected and that's in the security arena or if there's anything in a sensitive world. But ultimately we are all in this together. But we are approaching it from a much more regional standpoint.
We're hearing on a daily basis huge sums of investment going, you know, from west to east, east to west. Are these big numbers, the huge numbers we've seen, hundreds of billions of dollars, are these realistically achievable?
11 more exchanges in this transcript
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Cantor, E. (2026, March 12). FII9: Eric Cantor - Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Moelis & Company & Former US House Leader [Interview transcript]. FII Institute. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/758576/
MLA
Eric Cantor. "FII9: Eric Cantor - Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Moelis & Company & Former US House Leader." FII Institute, 12 Mar. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/758576/.
BibTeX
@misc{cantor2026_758576,
author = {Eric Cantor},
title = {FII9: Eric Cantor - Vice Chairman \& Managing Director, Moelis \& Company \& Former US House Leader},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, FII Institute. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {mar},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/758576/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
