The Middle East Becomes the World’s ATM

Five years ago, Saudi officials watched a wave of American finance executives pull out of a free investment confab in Riyadh after the murder of a dissident journalist made the kingdom a toxic place to do business.

This year, the conference, nicknamed “Davos in the Desert,” is expecting so much demand it is charging executives $15,000 a person.

Middle East monarchies eager for global influence are having a moment on the world’s financial stage. They are flush with cash from an energy boom at the very time traditional Western financiers—hampered by rising interest rates—have retreated from deal making and private investing.

The region’s sovereign-wealth funds have become the en vogue ATM for private equity, venture capital and real-estate funds struggling to raise money elsewhere.

The market for marquee mergers and acquisitions has seen a surge of interest from the region. Recently announced deals include an Abu Dhabi fund’s purchase of investment manager Fortress for more than $2 billion and a Saudi fund’s $700 million purchase of global lender Standard Chartered’s aviation unit.

Companies and funds overseen by Abu Dhabi’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, have made runs at buying Standard Chartered and investment bank Lazard. They have also struck recent deals to buy a $1.2 billion U.K. healthcare company and to take partial control of a nearly $6 billion Colombian food giant.

“Now, everybody wants to go to the Middle East—it’s like the gold rush in the U.S. once upon a time,” said Peter Jädersten, founder of fundraising advisory firm Jade Advisors. “It’s difficult to raise money everywhere.”

Fund managers visiting the region say they often wait across from rivals in waiting rooms of sovereign-wealth funds. Silicon Valley and New York managers are a near-constant presence in the white-marble floored lobby of the Four Seasons Abu Dhabi, as with other top hotels, they say.

The Riyadh conference next month—a pet project of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman known as the Future Investment Initiative—is expected to be a magnet for money hunters. In 2018, Wall Street executives backed out after Saudi operatives murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and for years many startups and funds said they avoided investment from the country over moral concerns.

Some companies continue to steer clear of the kingdom, while human-rights groups say its record on treatment of government dissidents remains a serious problem.

But Saudi funding became more in demand last year when other money began to get tight. At last year’s conference the Public Investment Fund’s chief, Yasir Al Rumayyan, sat on a panel discussion with two of the world’s biggest investment-firm executives, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates. Top names in venture capital mixed on the floor, and FTX chief Sam Bankman Fried looked for funding.

Ben Horowitz, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said at a PIF-sponsored conference this spring that Saudi Arabia was a “startup country,” and referred to Prince Mohammed as its “founder” who was creating a new culture and new vision for the country.

The region’s new dominance is most apparent among private funds, the type that lock up investors’ money for years. While detailed statistics are scarce, figures at two of the biggest sovereign funds suggest a surge. At Saudi’s PIF, commitments for “investment securities”—a category that includes private funds—rose to $56 billion in 2022, up from $33 billion a year earlier. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala reported that equity commitments doubled to $18 billion in 2022.

Executives at private-equity giants TPG, KKR and Carlyle Group have told investors that interest from the Middle East remains strong while other parts of the world recede.

“If you’re in the U.S., there’s a certain degree of concern,” Carlyle CEO Harvey Schwartz said at a June conference. Middle East investors, he said, are “very front-footed, very dynamic.”

While the Middle East steps on the gas, the traditional backers of investment funds—pension plans and college endowments—are in retreat. The global shift to higher interest rates caused losses in the biggest parts of their portfolios—especially stocks and bonds.

Investors put $33 billion toward U.S.-based venture capital funds in the first half of 2023, less than half the $74 billion in the same period in 2021, according to PitchBook. Global fundraising for all private funds fell 10% last year to $1.5 trillion, according to Preqin—a decline many expect to continue.

“Fundraising has become much, much harder over the past 12 months,” said Brenda Rainey, an executive vice president at Bain & Co. who advises private-equity funds.

The reason for the region’s burst of funding and deal making is twofold.

Higher energy prices—a byproduct of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—have given the region’s oil- and gas-dependent wealth funds tens of billions of dollars of extra money to spend. That means a drop in oil prices could quickly cause a pullback from the Gulf countries, as has happened in energy booms-turned-bust of the past.

At the same time, Saudi Prince Mohammed and top officials in the U.A.E. have jostled for greater sway on the world stage—in geopolitics, finance and sports—pumping additional money into their wealth funds to do deals and expand industry at home.

The intersection of politics and finance in the region has led Gulf wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Qatar to be the main financial backers of two key Trump administration figures: Jared Kushner and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who together raised billions of dollars from the region.

Gulf funds have pushed their U.S. peers to open offices in the region to more easily win investments, fund managers say.

BlackRock has said it would create a team on the ground in Riyadh dedicated to boosting investment into infrastructure projects in the Gulf.

Millennium Management LLC, based in New York, set up an office in Dubai in 2020 and others followed, including private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners and ExodusPoint Capital Management, the largest-ever hedge-fund startup with $8 billion in initial capital. Europe’s Tikehau Capital and Ardian both established teams in Abu Dhabi, and U.S. alternative investment manager, Pretium, hired a local industry veteran from Dubai.

Dalio also set up an office in Abu Dhabi for the Dalio Family Office, his personal venture. Rajeev Misra, a longtime financier for SoftBank Group who secured over $6 billion in commitments for a new venture from multiple Abu Dhabi-aligned investment funds, is moving to the U.A.E. from the U.K., according to people familiar with his plans.

There is now an “awareness that relationships have to be built and that doesn’t happen overnight,” said Joseph Morris, a Dubai-based managing director at U.S.-based advisory firm Newmark Group.

The venture capital arm of Tiger Global has struggled to raise its latest fund, repeatedly cutting its target by billions of dollars. Stung by losses and the cooler fundraising environment, many U.S. investors have given it the cold shoulder, investors say.

One place it found success: Saudi Arabia. A division of PIF, Sanabil, this spring added Tiger’s name to the public list of fund managers it backs. Others on the list include Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz.

Ibrahim Ajami, who oversees startup investments at Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala, which invests in companies as well as funds, said the environment gives Mubadala the ability to be “very thoughtful and selective” about who it backs.

He can negotiate terms that let Mubadala buy a stake in the fund manager itself, he said, or allow it to invest alongside others.

“What we are doing is going deeper—and more concentrated and more engaged—with a select group of managers,” he said.

—Summer Said and Berber Jin contributed to this article.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

The Middle East Becomes the World’s ATM

Flush with cash from an energy boom, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies have a moment on the world’s financial stage

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.