BlackRock Saudi Arabia intends to establish a Riyadh-based multiasset-class platform investing across public and private markets, with an initial anchor investment of up to $5 billion from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).
The two have signed a memorandum of understanding for the establishment of BlackRock Riyadh Investment Management (BRIM), a joint statement said. The anchor investment is subject to the achievement of agreed milestones.
A Riyadh-based portfolio management team is expected to manage the assets, with support from BlackRock’s global asset management platform. Recruitment is already underway, with job specifications already in the market and offers being made for executives to join to set up the operational platform, a BlackRock spokesperson told Pensions & Investments, a sibling publication of Crain Currency. The investment team will be a combination of existing BlackRock personnel and new, on-the-ground staff.
In terms of asset classes, the intention is to manage equities and bonds on the public side and private debt and infrastructure on the private markets side, the spokesperson said. These will be Middle East- and North Africa-based assets, but the majority of investments will be Saudi Arabia-specific.
The move will also contribute to the enhancement of the kingdom’s asset management sector: BRIM aims to support foreign institutional investment into Saudi Arabia, the statement said. It also seeks to broaden local capital markets while driving investor diversification across asset classes and develop the market’s Saudi-based asset management talent.
“One of BlackRock’s most important contributions in the countries in which we operate is to bring our knowledge and understanding of capital markets to help drive future economic development,” Chairman and CEO Larry Fink said in the statement. “We are excited to build on the deep partnership we have developed with PIF over many years to launch this first-of-its-kind international investment management platform in Saudi Arabia.”
The platform will be fully integrated with BlackRock’s investment capabilities and operating platform.
BlackRock has also already launched a graduate program in Riyadh — the BRIM Graduate Development Program — teaming up on talent development initiatives with PIF.
PIF is an active player in advancing Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation and diversification. The sovereign wealth fund has about $750 billion in assets, according to the kingdom’s Vision 2030 annual report for 2023. Since 2017, PIF has created 94 companies and more than 644,000 direct and indirect jobs, the statement added.
The nonbinding memorandum is subject to satisfying necessary conditions, regulatory approvals, and the fulfillment of specified milestones, such as those related to talent development.