Public Investment Fund

Public Investment Fund
Native name
صندوق الإستثمارات العامة
Founded17 August 1971; 53 years ago (1971-08-17)
FounderFaisal bin Abdulaziz
Headquarters
Riyadh
,
Saudi Arabia
Key people
AUMUS$930 billion (March 2024)[1]
OwnerGovernment of Saudi Arabia
Websitepif.gov.sa Edit this at Wikidata

The Public Investment Fund (PIF; Arabic: صندوق الاستثمارات العامة) is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. It is among the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world with total estimated assets of US$930 billion (£718.2 billion).[2] It was created in 1971 for the purpose of investing funds on behalf of the Government of Saudi Arabia.[3] The wealth fund is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler since 2015.[4][5]

More than 60% of the fund's activities are within Saudi Arabia.[6] Within Saudi Arabia, the fund's investments primarily go to private conglomerates owned by prominent Saudi business families who have close ties to the Saudi ruling family.[6] Outside Saudi Arabia the fund's investments into prominent foreign assets such as Premier League football club Newcastle United have generated controversy due to the fund's lack of transparency and close control by the Saudi government, which has itself faced significant criticism around the lack of human rights in the country.[7][8]

  1. ^ "Top 100 Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund Rankings by Total Assets – SWFI". swfinstitute.org.
  2. ^ "Public Investment Fund (PIF) – Sovereign Wealth Fund, Saudi Arabia – SWFI". swfinstitute.org. Retrieved 17 March 2024.
  3. ^ Clark, Simon (1 November 2016). "Saudi Wealth Fund May Be World's Least Transparent". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 18 July 2021.
  4. ^ Kirkpatrick, David D.; Kelly, Kate (10 April 2022). "Before Giving Billions to Jared Kushner, Saudi Investment Fund Had Big Doubts". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 10 April 2022.
  5. ^ Montambault Trudelle, Alexis (2022). "The Public Investment Fund and Salman's state: the political drivers of sovereign wealth management in Saudi Arabia". Review of International Political Economy. 30 (2): 747–771. doi:10.1080/09692290.2022.2069143. ISSN 0969-2290. S2CID 248596678.
  6. ^ a b Montambault Trudelle, Alexis (2023). "Towards a sociology of state investment funds? sovereign wealth funds and state-business relations in Saudi Arabia". New Political Economy. 28 (3): 380–397. doi:10.1080/13563467.2022.2126448. ISSN 1356-3467. S2CID 252424148.
  7. ^ "Newcastle United sold to Saudi consortium amid concerns about human rights abuses". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 8 October 2021.
  8. ^ "Saudi Wealth Fund May Be World's Least Transparent". WSJ. 1 November 2016. Retrieved 7 January 2023.