Riyadh, (Business News Report)|| The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) continues to acquire more US listed shares, according to a regulatory disclosure in the United States.
The disclosure said that the PIF had acquired shares listed in the United States, with a value of about $56 billion, as of December last year.
Shares rose from $43.4 billion at the end of September, boosted by an increase in the value of electric car maker Lucid.
The disclosure showed that the value of the fund’s holdings in Lucid in December amounted to $38.6 billion, up from $25.8 billion at the end of September.
Lucid’s listing in July last year was a huge boost to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
The Public Investment Fund, which currently owns a stake in Lucid approaching 62%, invested more than $1 billion in the company in 2018 in exchange for a large stake and increased its investments in February 2021.
Lucid’s shares are down 28% since the beginning of the year.
The PIF also owns a 3.75% stake in Uber Technologies for passenger transportation services.
The fund sharply reduced its stake in Prologis, while significantly increasing its stake in Farfetch, a technology platform in the fashion industry, to 3.3 million Class A shares.
He also raised his stake in Pinterest.
Vision 2030
The PIF, which manages about $480 billion in assets, is at the center of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, a national strategy aimed at diversifying the kingdom’s economy and reducing dependence on hydrocarbons.
The Saudi government said last Sunday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had transferred 4% of Saudi Aramco’s shares (worth $80 billion) to the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, making it the sixth largest sovereign fund in the world.
The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted the bin Salman, as saying that “the transfer of these shares is part of the kingdom’s long-term strategy aimed at supporting the restructuring of the national economy.”
Bin Salman stressed that the transfer of Aramco shares will contribute to supporting the fund’s plans to raise the volume of its assets under management to about 4 trillion riyals ($1.7 trillion) by the end of 2025.
The shares of Saudi Aramco transferred to the Public Investment Fund will contribute to strengthening its position and high credit rating in the medium term.
