Amidst the highly volatile global capital market and increasing fears of recession, Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund owned by Saudi Arabia, has decided to invest more than 7 billion dollars in renowned US stocks such as Amazon Inc, Google parent company, Alphabet Inc, and BlackRock.
Public Investment Fund (PIF) which is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world has been under the control of Muhammad bin Salman, de facto ruler of the west Asian country, since 2015.
Apart from Amazon, Alphabet and BlackRock the PIF also plans to invest in stocks of JPMorgan Chase & Co, other gaming and tech companies.
News reports suggest that PIF purchased additional stocks in Meta platforms Inc, PayPal Holdings Inc and Electronic Arts Inc. The sovereign wealth of Saudi Arabia has significant investments in technology and the financial sector.
The latest move by PIF to increase its investments in the sectors and also to add new holdings into the portfolio is giving a signal that the investment vehicle plans to consolidate its position in the tech and financial sector.
A few years ago in the early 2020 PIF purchased a huge amount of stakes in US-based companies by spending billions of dollars. Later due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 virus and the resultant lockdown, many of the stocks which were acquired by public investment fund suffered huge losses. This forced the sovereign wealth fund to sell a large amount of the shares it purchased in the early months of 2020.
News reports suggest that the public investment fund owned and controlled by the Saudi Arabian royal family is planning to double its total assets by 2025. PIF currently hold an influential stake in the social networking platform, Twitter, and gaming companies such as Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and Activation Blizzard. The sovereign wealth fund also has a 5% stake in Nintendo Co Limited, a video game company based in Kyoto Japan.
In the second quarter of the current financial year, the portfolio value of PIF in the United States of America had decreased from 43 billion dollars to 40 billion dollars. The latest investment decisions of the Public Investment Fund to purchase stakes in tech and financial giants are looked up to as a plan of the Saudi Arabian fund to increase its position and holding in the US capital markets.
In 2021, the fund made a very controversial acquisition of primer league football club, Newcastle United. The acquisition resulted in both political and diplomatic crises between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.