Join us for an insightful discussion with H.E. Yasir O. Al-Rumayyan, Governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Chairman of Saudi Aramco, and Chairman of the FII Institute, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Moderated by: Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Vista Equity Partners
Questions asked in this interview
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5:15What are some of the infrastructural assets and national champions that you would encourage us as investors to take a really close look at in investing with you?
8:04How would you encourage, again, us as investors in the world to really engage in the specific sectors with the portfolio companies that you've built over the last 10 years?
10:38And what is the kingdom's role and the PIF's role in ensuring that that ecosystem evolves effectively, sustainably, that you can leverage for not only your national champions but for your other partners who are engaged in it?
13:48And what would you encourage us to ensure that we walk away with at the end of this conference over the next day or two?
Well, thank you, Your Excellency. It's always good to see you and welcome you back to Miami and to the United States with all of the wonderful team and partnerships that you brought to our country and all the changes you've made in the world. To start off, I think what we'd all like to hear is how you think about this activity that's occurring in the Middle East and how it affects the strategy of the PIF going forward.
First of all, it's always good to be back to Miami. This is our fourth Miami FII event. Actually, one of the guys yesterday asked me, 'Do you know how many times we've been here?' I said maybe this is the second or third time, and I couldn't believe this is the fourth time. So, it's always great to be back here. I just maybe would like to start with three main messages. The Saudi macroeconomic and fiscal position remains strong, stable, and resilient. And the PIF's portfolio is well diversified and structurally resilient. We are a long-term patient investor. We measure our returns not in quarters but in decades. And PIF remains committed to its investments around the world.
It's been impressive to see what the PIF has done in building partnerships, making impact, and building ecosystems. Part of what you all have done, of course, is with the FII, invited the world to come and participate in a lot of the work that you are doing and the way that you are investing capital. What we'd love to hear is how you think about the next evolution of the strategy of the PIF and how we as partners of the PIF can participate in that evolution of the strategy.
Yeah, I always would like to, when answering these kind of questions, to give some bit of background on what PIF has accomplished. When it started back in 1971, it was more of a nation builder that created a number of different sectors within the Saudi economy. Then the second transition was from the year 2015 until 2020, and we accelerated a number of different sectors. Then we're in the third phase, which is from 2021 until the end of 2025. A lot of things changed. We put so many efforts to deploy more domestically, and we did so much within the domestic economy. Then now, to your point, it's the evolution of our strategy because it keeps on changing by progress. We're going to hopefully reveal our next five-year strategy in the coming few weeks. And in this strategy, we want to get more and more people to work with us, to encourage third-party capital to work with us. We built the foundation for many of these investments. Initially, and in the previous strategy, we wanted to do most of the investments by ourselves, and it's all equity. Now we're looking into it in a greater way, how to invite people to come and work with us. And I'm not talking only about the domestic investors, the local investors to come and work with us, but I'm talking about the international investors. And we already started seeing some of their results by having major asset managers like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, establishing new funds with us to come and invest in the Saudi economy.
It's been impressive to see how the PIF has taken a leadership role through institutions like the FII and actually putting capital to build national champions, invite parties to participate in opportunities. And as you said, when we were in Riyadh, for a period of time you had a lot of Saudi coming to the world, and now you're looking to invite the world to come to Saudi. What are the ways that you would encourage investors to participate? The PIF has done, I think, a wonderful job building out infrastructure that derisks investment. What are some of the infrastructural assets and national champions that you would encourage us as investors to take a really close look at in investing with you?
Yeah, I mean, I remember the first time when I visited the US back in 2015 as a governor of PIF, I tried to sit with most of the asset managers. No one knew who we were, right? So the main thing that we tried to do and achieve is how to bring Saudi to the world, how the different investors around the world will know who PIF is and what Saudi and what the investments in Saudi could look or feel like. Now we are in a state where we want to bring the whole world to come and invest in Saudi. And for the past 10 years or so, we built the foundation for these investments, for the right environment, the right ecosystems for people to come and invest with us. And there could be different parts of investment. It doesn't have to be all in form of JVs or an actual investment into our companies, but to come and work with us. And the investments that we are in, not only in the urban development and real estate projects, but in data centers and the pharmaceutical sectors that we're in, and renewable energy that we would like to invest in and have it as one of our main targeted ecosystems.
Well, one of the things that's been impressive is the amount of capital that you have actually brought into the US as investments. Almost $200 billion at this point across multiple sectors. When you think about avionics, you think about mobility, we're now thinking about entertainment and sports. And the PIF is also, in our private conversations, looking to encourage investors to now start taking the lead in these activities. I remember a time when we were in the Red Sea, just looking at how you've invited local investors to take the lead and inviting foreign investment. How would you encourage, again, us as investors in the world to really engage in the specific sectors with the portfolio companies that you've built over the last 10 years?
7 more exchanges in this transcript
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