DUBAI: Macquarie Asset Management (MAM) is looking to set up an office in Saudi Arabia after signing a preliminary agreement with the Gulf country’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund PIF aimed at boosting investment into the kingdom, they said on Monday.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), PIF and the asset management arm of Australia’s top investment bank will explore joint investments in sectors such as digital infrastructure, electric vehicle infrastructure and energy storage.
Saudi Arabia has been seeking to bring more foreign investment to the country as part of its Vision 2030 programme to shift the economy away from oil dependency and boost the private sector.
The kingdom has declared the ambitious goal of raising $100 billion in FDI by 2030, but FDI numbers remain far from target.
Its investment ministry implemented a regional headquarters programme in 2024 that required firms to move their headquarters to Riyadh if they wished to be eligible for lucrative government contracts. Nearly 600 firms had complied, the investment minister said in February this year.
The MoU on Monday marks a “milestone” in attracting global capital and expertise to speed up the country’s infrastructure pipeline, PIF’s Deputy Governor and Head of MENA Investments Yazeed A. Al-Humied said.
It follows a string of other non-binding agreements under which the PIF has teamed up with several asset managers to boost investment into the kingdom.
They include MoUs with infrastructure investment manager I Squared Capital, with Franklin Templeton and Neuberger Berman, which were inked during U.S.President Donald Trump’s tour of Gulf countries in May.
MoUs are less formal than contracts and do not always turn into cash transactions.
Last month, state oil firm Saudi Aramco signed an $11 billion infrastructure agreement with BlackRock’s GIP involving its Jafurah gas processing facilities.
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