It’s probably the most powerful gathering of the worldwide elite you may have never heard of: a 36-hour confab in Miami for billionaires, CEOs and celebrities with a stated agenda of “catalyzing positive impact” that has grow to be the only most significant event for tapping into Saudi Arabia’s vast wealth.
The Future Investment Initiative conference (FII) is an attempt by the oil-rich kingdom to achieve respectability and compete with the World Economic Forum in Davos in setting the worldwide agenda. The Miami event is a spin-off of Saudi Arabia’s annual conference in October, dubbed Davos within the desert.
This week The Post watched as Wall Street titans who control an estimated $10 trillion of assets — almost double what the federal government spends in a yr — mixed with the dominion’s business elite, and celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Rob Lowe.
The guest list included Steve Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, which manages $880 billion, private equity behemoth Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein, and executives from Goldman Sachs, HSBC, State Street and Franklin Templeton.
It was held at The Faena, an upscale South Beach hotel where rooms average $1,000 per night.
Mingling over tea, coffee and water — the FII respects the Muslim country’s ban on alcohol — were Jared Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law whose $2 billion investment fund is sort of entirely Saudi Arabian money, and Trump’s former treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, who has also raised money within the region.
In total, The Post calculated, the ten wealthiest speakers on the two-day event boasted a private net value of $300 billion.
The conference itself is a display of Saudi Arabia’s growing confidence as a global power broker under de factor ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was not present for the event.
It was the second time it was held within the US, and in contrast to last yr where tickets were free, attendees this week paid as much as $15,000 to be there.
While the event has yet to draw the form of media attention given to Davos and other stops on the worldwide elite’s annual itinerary — reminiscent of the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado in June or the Allen & Company retreat for media powerbrokers in Sun Valley, Idaho — it’s one other play for prestige by the Saudis.
In return for turning up, there’s the potential to tap into the geyser of money the country’s sovereign investment fund, The Public Investment Fund or PIF, has at its disposal.
As if anyone needed a reminder concerning the sheer magnitude of cash involved, in the primary couple of minutes of the event, Yasir al-Rumayyan, the chair of the Kingdom’s publicly traded oil company Aramco, announced plans to spend a further $70 billion within the US starting in 2025 on top of investing an estimated $100 billion since 2017.
“The information and numbers the Aramco chair dropped were mind-blowing,” one attendee said of Saudi’s plans for investment.
“The conversation wasn’t about showcasing Saudis for investors it was more ‘agenda-setting,’” one other source said of the event.
Other attendees included Dell Computers founder Michael Dell, real estate billionaire Stephen Ross, whose Related Firms built Latest York’s Hudson Yards development, hotel billionaire Barry Sternlicht and sports investment CEO Gerry Cardinale, whose Redbird Capital Partners is a component owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Paltrow has launched a enterprise fund after greater than a decade at lifestyle brand Goop and can likely be looking for capital for one other fund soon.
Rob Lowe, the “West Wing” actor and Atkins pitchman, was one other Hollywood name wooed by the Saudi wealth.
What was not on the agenda was Israel’s war in Gaza and escalating tensions within the Gulf on account of Houthi attacks on shipping off Yemen. There was also no mention of Saudi’s human rights record.
In 2017, weeks after the primary FII was held at a hotel in Riyadh, the country’s capital, bin Salman used the identical venue to imprison a whole lot of rival members of the royal family and a number of the country’s wealthiest men, consolidating his grip on power.
One source described it as if the conference had been “frozen in time” and “faraway from the skin world.”
It also ignored the plight of investment banker Michael Klein, who worked with the dominion on its try and merge the PGA golf tour with its rival LIV event series.
He has been subpoenaed by Congress because it investigates the deal — but told that if he complies he could face criminal charges in Saudi, which operates under sharia law.
Saudi has turned to Richard Attias, who co-founded the Clinton Global Initiative with Bill and Hillary Clinton, to run the FII events and fill it with the suitable people.
“What I’ve seen the past five years when it comes to transformation is so massive that anything is feasible,” Attias told The Post.
“Nothing will stop Americans from working with Saudis,” he added.