Is he Mohamed Bin Salman’s straw man or an effective manager who will bring the reforms to a successful conclusion in the Saudi kingdom? For now he accumulates presidencies: that of Aramco, the sovereign fund of the Arab country and Newcastle.
It is rare for a commoner to take on a leading role in Saudi Arabia, where the princes of the ruling family often hold the highest-ranking positions, including abroad. However, the case of Yasir al-Rumayyan marks a distance from tradition, since he has become the modern and reliable face of the Arab kingdom in the world; a kind of CEO of the country, in the same way that Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink are of JP Morgan and BlackRock.
“In the end, Yasir al-Rumayyan seems to be an instrument of this great movement, similar in all the Gulf monarchies. The relationship with the West is first and foremost a trade pact, and modernization is a productivity lever,” wrote journalist Laura- Maï Gaveriaux, correspondent for the French newspaper Les Échos in Dubai, in an article published a little over two years ago.
“Those close to King Salmán and MBS are appointed to replace the representatives of a competent middle class that has acted as a counterweight. The replacement of Khaled al-Faleh by Al-Rumayyan was understood in this sense,” Gaveriaux pointed out, referring to Al-Faleh, who was CEO until 2015 of Aramco, the Saudi oil company.
Precisely, that year Salmán Bin Abdulaziz came to the throne after the death of his brother Abdalá, and as the new king he named his son Mohamed, baptized by the press as MBS, as heir. His rise to power was also an opportunity for Al-Rumayyan, who at 52 has taken on some very prominent positions in Saudi Arabia.
He studied accounting at King Faisal University in the early 1990s and started working in the financial sector. As reflected in his profile on LinkedIn, he went through the Saudi Holandi Bank as head of international brokerage, was director of corporate finance at the Capital Market Authority (something like the Saudi CNMV) -period in which he also graduated from the Management Program General of Harvard Business School-, was a member of the board of directors of the Saudi stock exchange (Tadawul) and became CEO of Saudi Fransi Bank, a position he left in 2015 (the key year).
From the appearance of MBS on the scene, the important charges arrived. That same year, he was appointed managing director of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the Saudi sovereign fund that already accumulates 580,000 million dollars and that wants to manage financial assets valued at 2 trillion dollars in 2030. At the moment, it is the sixth largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
The fund’s capital is intended to cushion the state budget against price fluctuations in the commodity market, finance development projects, and attract investment and know-how from abroad to the kingdom.
According to Reuters, as of November last year PIF held notable positions in Lucid Group, Uber Technologies, Just Eat, Alibaba, Walmart and Pinterest. To this must be added positions in the Indian teleco Jio Platforms, of Reliance Industries, where it invested 1,500 million dollars, and the 45,000 million it invested in the Vision Fund of the Japanese firm Softbank, specialized in innovation and technology, in 2018.
Dual leadership in the kingdom
In 2019, Yasir al-Rumayyan became the governor of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and, at the same time, he was appointed president of Aramco with the aim of completing his IPO, but also because the oil company is the gold mine with which finance the economic diversification of the Arab country.
At first, Bin Salmán announced that he would withdraw 40,000 million dollars a year from the fund to reinvest them in the domestic economy. Likewise, as has been seen this week, valued at 80,000 million dollars, to the sovereign fund.
“The expansion of the PIF is mainly motivated by power politics. The sovereign wealth fund gives Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman direct access to the important financial resources of the state. He can use these resources according to his preferences and thus buy the loyalty of politically important factions.” within the elite. In addition, Bin Salmán could use the PIF to buy international support for his political goals,” says researcher Stephan Roll, a member of the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Policy (SWP) in an analysis.
It is this dark image of Bin Salman that questions Al-Rumayyan’s role. “Who is really close to MBS? Those who do his bidding,” said Agnès Levallois, senior researcher at the France-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (strategic research foundation), in the Les Échos article.
One of the last positions that Al-Rumayyan has assumed is that of non-executive president of Newcastle, of pounds in 2021. According to The Guardian, for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch it is a case of sportwashing: the use of sport to mask things that Saudi Arabia would rather the world forget.
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