Opening Conversation with His Excellency Yasir O. Al-Rumayyan | FII Priority ROME 2026

First of all, good morning, everybody, and I'm really happy to be here in Rome for the FII prior to being in Rome. I would like first of all to congratulate Her Royal Highness Princess Nourah bint Mishari for being the new CEO of the FII Institute, which I think will take it to the next level, hopefully after our event in Riyadh, which is the 10th year anniversary. Going back to the conflict that happened in the Strait of Hormuz, it didn't only affect the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the GCC countries, but it had a greater effect not only on the region, but the whole world. And it wasn't only about energy scarcity or a catastrophe, I would even say it was beyond that. It's gone to the petrochemicals, to the fertilizers, to the advanced manufacturing like helium, with GPUs and chips. The good thing that we have in Saudi, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Aramco, and also the PIF, is we do think in years and decades rather than just quarters. So, we had a similar situation back in the '80s where the Strait of Hormuz was threatened to be blockaded by the Iranian regime, and it was decided since then that we will have a pipeline from east to west. And if it wasn't for this pipeline, we wouldn't have a lifeline for us as a Saudi economy. We are reducing the production; we used to produce before the crisis about 10 million barrels a day with a capacity of producing 12 million barrels a day. And this pipeline was giving us 5.5 million, and we increased it all the way to 7 million with new technologies and innovations that the Aramco engineers had achieved. Also, Aramco has storage facilities around the world, especially in Asia, Korea, and Japan, and we're thinking seriously of having larger storage facilities all over the world. If you look at China, they have storage facilities of about 1.2 billion barrels. The US has almost 800 million barrels. So, if it wasn't for this kind of long-term thinking, the world would have been in a really bad situation, even worse than where we were. For us at the PIF, we always continue to invest, be very much diverse, and our portfolio is structurally resilient. We are a long-term patient investor, and we will remain committed to all of our investments and investment strategy around the world.

We do have challenges, but I think the opportunities are greater. So, if you look at what we've been doing since the beginning in 2017 until the year 2025, we have deployed about 98 billion euros across Europe and the UK, of course. That has given us about 70 billion euros of GDP contribution and created about 160,000 jobs around Europe. Also, Aramco deployed about 80 billion euros with European suppliers, and I think 25% was here in Italy, about 20 billion euros of procurements from suppliers from Italy. We have done a number of JVs with different European parties, and I'll just give an example: Pirelli. We brought them to the automotive cluster north of Jeddah to help us create the automobile industry in Saudi. Of course, we brought in partners and JVs from all over the world. We're also proud of some of our investments in Europe like Pagani, also Benetti. And I think during this conference, we will show about maybe 140 different opportunities that we think can bring a lot of benefits to both parties, the European partners, and also would bring more benefits to us as industries within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Out of the 140, the opportunities that we're talking about that need the strength of European industries is worth a total of about 10.4 billion euros. And this is only until the end of 2030. So, I think the opportunities are more. Now, the challenges you asked me about. And that's what Richard said in his opening remarks. The challenges are mainly regulatory challenges and some of the laws that were supposed to be activated are really hurting investors such as ourselves, Aramco, SABIC, PIF, not only to invest more, but to keep their own investments in Europe. The good thing is the European regulators and policy makers are looking into it, and hopefully we will have better solutions for it.