Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund wants the kingdom to become a global investment center

In Fortune Gulf Brief today: “Bringing the world back to Saudi Arabia” The $300 billion question: will Gulf capital fund Iran’s reconstruction? DP World in talks to operate first U.S. container terminal Dubai steams ahead with $9.2 billion Metro Gold Line The 3 things we enjoyed reading this week In case anyone was still in doubt about Saudi Arabia’s investment pivot then the kingdom’s most senior financial executive spelt it out in the clearest terms yet last week. “Now our new strategy is to bring the world back to Saudi,” Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), told a packed auditorium at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Priority Europe summit held in Rome last week. While the PIF’s previous investment strategy focused on integrating Saudi Arabia more deeply into the global economy, the fund is now seeking to make the kingdom a center of global economic activity as outlined in its recently approved 2026–30 strategy. The PIF—the main driver of Saudi’s multitrillion-dollar Vision 2030 diversification plan—is directing 80% of its capital into domestic investments, scaling back foreign allocations to 20% from a peak of 30% and deprioritizing costly or slow-yielding giga-projects. Al-Rumayyan’s remark comes in the wake of a series of sizeble cutbacks across some of Saudi’s prized giga-projects such as Neom—an economic zone under construction in northwest Saudi Arabia. Neom’s flagship infrastructure project , The Line—originally envisioned as a 106-mile futuristic, linear megacity for 9 million residents— is to be radically scaled back to measure just 1.5 miles in its first phase, while ski resort Trojena is also being downsized and will no longer host the 2029 Asia Winter Games, as planned. But the kingdom is still grappling with sizeable budgets in preparing to host the Expo 2030 world trade fair and the FIFA World Cup in 2034. The Iran war has added fresh urgency to the PIF’s need to sh