Saudi Arabia is working with Lazard Ltd. on how to provide funding for mega project NEOM, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Saudi Arabia is working with Lazard Ltd. as it considers how it will pay for Neom, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious $500 billion plan for a high-tech desert city, the paper reads.
The New York-based investment bank is helping the Kingdom evaluate financing options, including debt sales and a potential initial public offering on the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul), according to the people.
Deliberations are in the early stages and no firm decisions about the size or structure of any financing have been taken, the sources added.
Last July, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that NEOM will likely be publicly listed in 2024.
He added that phase one of the project will cost SAR 1.2 trillion till 2030, while there would be SAR 200-300 billion allocated by the government for NOEM, which is different from the SAR 500 billion investment from the Public Investment Fund, according to Argaam’s data.
MBS’ Science Fiction Project
Bloomberg has earlier described Saudi’s Neom as a “science fiction” project. A city defined as a wall, driven through an uninhabitable desert, hermetically sealed and reliant solely on technology to make it liveable, the paper said.
Construction has already begun, and Saudi projections call for 1.5 million people to live in The Line by 2030. The unconventional megacity is part of the government’s ambitious Neom development project, which released conceptual videos showing the city’s high walls enclosing trees, gardens and other plant life, nestling communities among work and recreational structures.
The designers say the structure will maintain an ideal climate year-round, thanks to its mix of shade, sunlight and ventilation. But not everyone was as keen on the concept of living between gigantic walls in the Saudi desert.
MBS’s Desert Dream Just Keeps Getting Weirder
In another report, Bloomberg charged that Neom appears to be one of the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)’s highest priorities, and the Saudi state is devoting immense resources to making it a reality.
Titled ‘MBS’s $500 Billion Desert Dream Just Keeps Getting Weirder,’ the report shed light on the expensive cost of the megacity project.
The Neom “style catalog” includes elevators that somehow fly through the sky, an urban spaceport, and buildings shaped like a double helix, a falcon’s outstretched wings, and a flower in bloom. There will be swim lanes for commuters and “smart” everything.
The project has tapped futurists, international architects, and even Hollywood production designers.
In 2005, plans for six new cities were announced, but only one made it off the drawing board: King Abdullah Economic City, a $30bn project 90 miles from Jeddah on the Red Sea coast. High hopes for the city have failed to come to fruition: it has a population of around 7,000 people, against the original target of two million by 2035.
As for Neom, many millions have so far been spent on architects, futurists and even Hollywood set designers. But so far only a handful of buildings have been built. The chaotic trajectory so far suggests that MbS’s urban dream may never be delivered.
