About

As the primary investment arm of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the scope of PIF’s business is incredibly broad, with the company possessing holdings in a number of sectors in hundreds of companies internationally. PIF has experienced a dramatic ramping-up of its operations over the past two years as part of the Saudi government’s Vision 2030 project, which has seen a corresponding expansion of the size and capabilities of its internal legal department. A major change to the team’s internal organisation came in August 2018 with the appointment of Shihana Alazzaz to PIF’s general counsel position, continuing a very successful period with the company since she joined in April 2017 as head of transactions. Head of regulatory affairs Fahad Alrashed also stood out as having had a particular impact on the development of the function since joining. Exposure to such a variety of markets means ensuring a huge volume of regulatory compliance structures to keep abreast of, while the entire organisation’s brief is fundamentally transactions-based. Indeed, the list of large transactions undertaken by the fund is highly impressive. Among others, in August 2018 it announced plans to back a seven million metre-square residential, commercial, retail and leisure development in Riyadh worth around $2.7bn for the first phase alone.