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The Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (SWF), has boosted its investments in the domestic market to a record 931.5 billion Saudi riyals ($248 billion) as it is pursuing an aggressive plan to expand activities in the local and foreign markets, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
PIF now owns shares in 17 major companies listed on the local stock market, with its largest assets concentrated in the state-controlled Saudi Aramco, the Arabic language daily Okaz said, citing PIF data.
PIF’s share ownership in Aramco is estimated at four percent with a value of around 335.7 billion riyals ($89.5 billion), the report said.
Its second largest ownership is in STC (Saudi Telecommunications Company), with a value of nearly 133 billion riyals ($35.5 billion), the report showed.
PIF also controls shares worth nearly 125 billion riyals ($33.3 billion) in mining giant Maaden and 116.7 billion riyals ($31.1 billion) in National Commercial Bank (NCB), Saudi Arabia’s largest bank by assets.
“PIF has been locked in a drive to expand its domestic investments, which are approaching the one trillion riyal mark,” the paper said.
According to PIF website, the Fund is one of the world’s largest SWFs, with estimated assets of nearly $620 billion.
(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)
