Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund reported an $11 billion investment loss for 2022, Economic sources revealed.
The Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is headed by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), did not report such a loss in its accounts for 2022, the year in which the same index fell by nearly 20 percent.
The Saudi PIF has recently made headlines after announcing a deal to merge the LIV golf tournament with the PGA Tour, as part of MBS’s sportwashing policies.
At home, the PIF supports large projects supervised by MBS, such as the $500 billion NEOM project and the Qiddiya entertainment city.
Abroad, the PIF owns stakes in major international companies, including a stake of $8.9 billion in the electric carmaker Lucid, which incurred losses following MBS’s partnership deal, and another stake of $3.2 billion in the video game company Activision Blizzard.
However, the PIF was subjected to severe blows and successive losses.
Lucid Group Inc stock is down 66% over the past year and gets a Bearish rating from Investors Observer Sentiment Indicator.
This came shortly after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) holds nearly 65% of Lucid’s common stock.
Sources familiar with the matter said that MBS is really furious over the decline, especially after he has recently decided to increase its Lucid stake by 9.2% to 1.11 billion shares.
Experts have warned that the sharp decline in foreign investments by 85% in just one year is a real disaster that proves that foreign investors do not trust the projects launched by the Crown Prince.
Efforts to attract inward investment have been hampered by the clampdown on senior business executives and other figures in 2017 – billed by the authorities as an anti-corruption drive.
