CEO of Saudi Arabia’s Futuristic City Project Leaves Abruptly

The chief executive of Saudi Arabia’s futuristic planned city Neom abruptly left his role, a major shake-up at the world’s biggest construction project.

Nadhmi al-Nasr, a hard-charging executive who had been chief executive of the kingdom’s marquee development project since 2018, departed in recent days, according to people familiar with the decision and an internal Neom email announcing the change.

The specific reasons for Nasr’s departure couldn’t be learned, but it amounts to a major reshuffling atop Neom, a priority of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that calls for an arid mountain ski resort, a floating business district and two 106-mile-long skyscrapers taller than the Empire State Building.

Delays, cost overruns and staff turnover have plagued the project. Saudi officials have come to realise they don’t have the money to fund all of the giant projects in the country they once planned, Saudi officials have said.

Executives from the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund — which oversees Neom—are coming in to wield control over the project, the people familiar with the decision said.

Aiman al-Mudaifer , a Public Investment Fund real-estate executive, was named acting CEO, according to an email sent Tuesday to employees from the Neom board. It called the move “a strategic decision of the Board and a natural evolution.”

Nasr didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The crown prince has pushed Neom, a region the size of Massachusetts, as a symbol of the country’s ambitious economic and social transformation.

He envisioned the project as both a sprawling real-estate development and a home for industries that could drive growth and diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from dependence on oil. But Neom’s urban planners have struggled to translate the ideas into reality.

Neom has also faced cultural challenges. In recent months, two other top executives at the project have left: Wayne Borg , who ran the project’s media division, and Antoni Vives , who helped lead development of the Line, according to several people familiar with the departures. Both were the subject of a Wall Street Journal article in September that highlighted the checkered pasts and inappropriate workplace behaviour of some Neom executives.

Borg and Vives didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The departure of senior executives could signal a shift in focus by Saudi officials from Neom to other investments across the country. When Neom was announced in 2017, Saudi officials viewed the project as a way to initiate change in the once-conservative Islamic kingdom without moving too quickly in the biggest cities, Riyadh and Jeddah.

Since then, Prince Mohammed’s moves to liberalise his economy have rapidly changed the kingdom as a whole, with a huge increase in women joining the labor force and an influx of foreign investors setting up offices in the capital. Some Neom employees now argue that there is little need for a separate part of the country with its own laws and regulations.

Neom employees also have grappled with turning eye-catching architectural ideas into viable business models.

The Line, the planned pair of skyscrapers marked by a shimmering mirror exterior, has proved particularly challenging. In the past three years the first phase of the project has been repeatedly downsized, from 10 miles to the current plan for 1.5 miles—in what would still be by far the world’s largest building. Foreign investors—once billed as key to the project—have yet to materialise despite numerous attempts to attract outside cash.

Around 100,000 workers live in a pop-up city in Neom, where excavation teams have dug the footprint of the Line and a set of train tracks meant to run beneath it, leaving a more than 60-mile-long gash in the desert.

Nasr came to the job as an accomplished builder. In the 1990s, he expanded a massive oil field for Saudi oil company Aramco, then led construction of a university complex on the edge of the Red Sea in the 2000s.

The challenge of Neom was far greater. When it was announced in 2017, the crown prince wanted the barren piece of desert turned into a shimmering city of one million by 2030, and ultimately nine million people. He put the price tag at $500 billion.

Former executives say the full cost of the Line alone would be well over $2 trillion, far more than the country has to spend on a development.

After Nasr took the reins in 2018, he pushed staff hard. Former employees described his management style as highly aggressive and abrasive, as he frequently yelled and belittled staff in meetings. “I drive everybody like a slave,” Nasr said in one meeting, the Journal previously reported.

Saudi officials have said the country is delaying some projects and canceling others, although it didn’t announce details. The country’s Public Investment Fund has about $1 trillion in assets, but most of that is tied up in investments that would be difficult to unload quickly , including 16% of Aramco, a Saudi telecom company and numerous stakes in private-equity funds.

Australia’s housing crisis will not be solved by first-home buyer incentives or tax changes alone, with leading property figures warning governments must tackle supply constraints if affordability is to improve.

Speaking at the Kanebridge Quarterly Property Leadership Summit in Sydney last week, expert project marketing specialist Sam Elbanna, property investor and fund manager Paul Miron and property consultant Karla McNeice said that a lack of housing supply remained the central issue facing the market.

Elbanna, Director of CPM Realty with more than 30 years’ experience in project sales, argued that successive governments had focused too heavily on stimulating demand rather than addressing the barriers preventing new housing from being delivered.

“The misconception is that politicians think the way to solve the housing crisis is to drive demand,” he said.

“The reality is that’s not the way. This is a supply-side problem, and it needs to be solved on the supply side.”

Drawing on his experience in project sales, Elbanna said policies designed to help first-home buyers often had unintended consequences, pointing to previous grants that ultimately flowed through to higher property prices.

Instead, he said developers were facing increasing red tape, approval delays and rising costs, which were discouraging new housing supply.

“In the absence of stock, demand exceeds supply,” he said.

Miron, a Co-Founder and Fund Manager of Msquared Capital, said the housing debate had become overly focused on tax policy while overlooking broader structural issues.

He argued that affordability challenges stemmed from a combination of factors, including planning constraints, supply shortages, migration levels and interest rates.

“No-one can be 100 per cent certain on the real reason for property prices is going up,” he said.

“The reason why property prices are higher is a combination of interest rates, lack of supply, migration, vacancy rates and maybe taxes play a role.”

Miron was critical of recent federal housing policy changes, warning they could reduce the number of new homes being built and further constrain supply that was even highlighted in the budget.

He also highlighted the importance of the property sector to the broader economy, noting that residential real estate and related industries employed more than one million Australians.

McNeice, who advises developers on sales strategy and market intelligence, said understanding buyers had become increasingly important as affordability pressures intensified.

While affordability remained a major consideration, she said today’s buyers were focused on value rather than simply price.

“People are looking for value for money,” she said.

She said buyers were increasingly evaluating factors such as transport connections, walkability, nearby amenities and flexible living spaces that could accommodate changing family needs.

“What infrastructure is going on? Can I walk to the shops? Can I meet people at the local cafe?” she said.

The panel also discussed the mounting pressures facing developers, with Elbanna arguing that many projects become financially unviable from the moment a site is purchased.

“The viability of a development happens at the moment the site is bought,” he said.

He said rising construction costs, higher interest rates and overly optimistic feasibility assumptions had left some developers exposed as market conditions changed.

While acknowledging the growing number of smaller and first-time developers entering the market, Elbanna said property development required expertise across finance, construction, marketing and legal disciplines.

“It is actually a business that requires a level of expertise,” he said.

Looking ahead, the panel agreed opportunities remained in the market despite current challenges.

Miron said property should continue to be viewed as a long-term investment and cautioned against trying to time short-term market movements.

McNeice said success would increasingly depend on identifying projects that genuinely met changing buyer expectations.

Elbanna said affordable housing remained achievable, but developers needed to deliver more than just homes.

“We can provide affordable housing in this country,” he said.

“But we’ve got to wrap that affordable housing with the things that people want.”

As Australia’s housing affordability debate intensifies, the panellists agreed on one point: without a meaningful increase in housing supply, demand-side measures alone are unlikely to solve the nation’s property challenges.

CEO of Saudi Arabia’s Futuristic City Project Leaves Abruptly

Longtime CEO Nadhmi al-Nasr left Neom, Saudi Arabia’s marquee development, which has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and staff turnover

Australia’s housing affordability crisis is being fuelled by chronic undersupply, planning delays and rising development costs, as politicians continue to focus on the wrong solutions.