David people wouldnt recognize me if my tie was fixed. But, ok. Just leave it this way. All right. David i dont consider myself a journalist, and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . We are here today with his excellency, yasir alrumayyan, who is both the chairman of saudi aramco and the head of the pif, which is the saudi sovereign wealth fund. So you have both jobs. How do you allocate your time between running the sovereign wealth fund, pif, and being the chair of saudi aramco . Doesnt that take you 80 or 100 hours a week . Yasir pif role is executive, the aramco is chairmanship. I dont have the executive chairmanship. In aramco, i focus on four things, basically, the strategy, the targets, the annual targets we have, the monitoring of the performance, and managing the actual board. In pif, i am the governor, although i am a board member and the pif board, but my role there is totally different. Its an executive role, and i am there every day for a number of hours looking at investment opportunities, looking after our portfolio companies. David in august of 2015, you became the head of pif. What size was it then, in terms of assets and management . Yasir pif was totally different than what it is today. In 2015, the board was changed. It became chaired by the crown prince, and we changed the strategy. The assets under management was Something Like 150 billion. Today, it is over 325 billion. David you said the crown prince appointed you to the position. How well did you know him before he appointed you . Did he know you very well . Yasir actually, i didnt know him at all. I had heard of him. I received a call. Before i took the post, i was the ceo of saudi forensic capital. I turned around this company from a losing company to one of the most Profitable Companies in saudi arabia and the middle east. At one stage, we had, like, 41 investment activities. I think the crown prince heard of me, and i got the call. David was it an interview, and he said, guess what . You have to leave your job, and this is a better job . What did he say . Yasir i thought it was going to be an interview, but it was, heres what i want you to do. Even when he told me, when can you start . I said maybe like three months. He said, it is one month and you will do it. Then i got another call the next week saying i have to come in immediately. David what did you tell your family, you just got a new job or Something Like that . Yasir you see, we are all very proud to be saudis and to participate in the positive changes that the country is living and doing right now. My wife and my kids, my kids were younger then, but they all felt maybe this is the right thing to do. David you said you would like it to be the Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund at some point, and get to 1 trillion yasir 2 trillion. David when do you think you will be able to get to 2 trillion . Yasir the number looks really big, because the Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund today is about 1 trillion. We think it is very much achievable by 2030. I will tell you where the growth will be coming from. So number one is the performance. We are doing exceedingly good performance. Number two is the assets we are getting from the government, like different companies. We are becoming a land bank for the government, also. Number three, cash injections that we are getting from the government. We have been getting some. Number four is the recycling of our profits. David all of those Different Things require a big staff to manage. How big is the pif staff today . Yasir we started with 40 people. Today we are more than 700. By year end, our target is to have more than 1000 fulltime employees at pif. David they will be all in saudi arabia . Yasir the bulk of them will be in saudi, but now we are opening in the Financial Capital of the world, so hopefully in the second half of this year, we will have our first office, going to be in new york, and potentially london also will be in the second half. We are also considering some coverage in asia, so most likely we are also going to have an office either in china, hong kong, potentially in singapore. David some sovereign wealth funds say their goal is to get the highest rate of return, whatever they can do legally to get the highest level of return in the country, out of the country. Is your mission to get the highest rate of return, or do you want certain goals, like improving Energy Diversification in the kingdom, or getting people to invest some money in the kingdom . What is your principal goal . Yasir believe it or not, all of the above. We need to have higher returns, economic impact, positive economic impact, changing the diversity, improving the diversity of revenues, also be the engine of Economic Growth in saudi. We are even looking into renewables and how we lower the emissions and all of these things. David as i understand, a principal goal of the crown prince is to make the kingdom less dependent on oil. Yasir absolutely. David right now, i assume a very large part of your budget comes from oil . Yasir yes, it is. David and you would like to get it down to below 50 . Yasir currently it is, like, 70 . The nonoil revenue increased quite tremendously in the past three years or so. Eventually, we want to be less dependent on oil. The reason being is the volatility in oil prices. The last thing is we want is a volatile economy, right . The more nonoil revenue we have in the economy, the better, sustainable, and less volatile economy you have. David one of the very visible investments you made early on your tenure i think was a 3. 5 billion investment in uber. Yasir yeah. David you are on the uber board . Yasir yes. David how did that deal come about . Did uber call you up, did you say it was a Good Opportunity . How did that come about . Yasir it came about from an app that i use, uber. It was an amazing app. I liked the service. An amazing disruptor. They came in, provided Better Service for the same customers for lesser prices. It was an amazing combination. There was one of the uber executives visiting the country, and he was visiting me for something else, and i knew about the uber. I asked him about it, and he said, yes, they were considering a capital raise. I asked the team to look into it. They loved it. Went through the whole structure we have, and we have layers and layers of investment diligence and what have you. We came to our investment committee, then the board, they all loved it. And so we decided david and so do you use uber yourself when you are in the United States or in the kingdom . Yasir i used to use it a lot. David they must know who you are when you show up. Yasir [laughs] maybe they do, yeah. David another very visible investment you made was a very large investment, i think about 45 billion, into the socalled first vision fund. So what brought that about, and are you happy with that investment . Yasir the alignment of the thinking. Thats what brought it. I remember sitting down with the crown prince, trying to strategize on what it is exactly that we would like to be invested in. Of course, it is the future. So we said artificial intelligence, robotics, internet of things. These were the many things we would like to be in. Remember, 70 of our population is under the age of 30. We need to have something sustainable for them in the longer term. When i met with him for the first time, he was talking about the exact same things we were looking for. So the alignment of the thinking is what drove us to have us make a partnership with softbank. David today you are happy with the investment . Yasir it is up about 9. 5 billion in 2. 5 years, so it is fine. David after you made a 45 billion commitment, did you have people saying if you had 45 billion for him, do you have 45 billion for me . Did you get a lot of those people calling you up . Yasir not a lot of people came in with a 45 billion proposition, but we have access to everyone. David you are the chairman of saudi aramco, the largest publicly traded company in the world, also the Largest Oil Company. Is that right . Yasir absolutely. The Largest Company from different levels, market cap, the profits we are generating are second to none. David let me ask you about another job you have. You are the chairman, as we talked earlier, of saudi aramco, which is the largest publicly traded company in the world, also the Largest Oil Company in the world. Is that right . Yasir yes, the Largest Company from different levels. Market cap, the profits we are generating are second to none, and the ipo that we had was the largest in the world. David you went public not too long ago. And that valuation, as i recall, roughly 1. 8 trillion. Something like that. Yasir the valuation was 1. 7 trillion. Now above 2 trillion for a couple of weeks. Now it is about 1. 8 trillion today. David so no company is as valuable as that company. Yasir none. David it has traded on the local Stock Exchange. Yasir the saudi Stock Exchange, yes. David have you thought about listing it in new york, london, tokyo . Yasir remember, we only offer 2 of the company. 98 of the Company Owned by the shareholder, the government of saudi arabia. Our program is to have a multiple number of listings over the years. We are looking into it to have more offerings. And these offerings could continue to be in saudi. And if we have any good Stock Exchange that we think can bring some Value Investors to us, we will definitely consider it. David now, Many Organizations now say they want to be Carbon Neutral by a certain period of time yasir yes. David because it contributes to Global Climate change. Yasir absolutely. David what is the position in saudi arabia . Do you want to be Carbon Neutral by a certain period of time, if possible . Yasir saudi aramco has been working on their emissions for decades now. We have one of the largest, if not the largest, production, but at the same time as a country and a company, we have one of the lowest emissions for a good reason. We started early on to be more efficient. We have been working, aramco, for 40 years, and the concession we have from the government is today about 60 years, unlike much of the other oil and gas companies. Their concessions are five to 10 years. Whenever we go to a site, to a well, we want to make sure this well is big enough to produce more, and at the same time, our depletion rate of these wells is very small. So some of the wells that we had 86 years ago, 84 years ago, are still uptodate operational. However, having said that, oil is very much important. It is the cheapest fossil fuel, generally, it is the Cheapest Energy source. Today, you have over 1 billion people in the world who dont have access to electricity, so you have to cater for those people. Thats why we think we should be more efficient, but at the same time, we shouldnt forget who we are and what we do. David historically, saudi arabia was the biggest producer of oil in the world. Now i think the u. S. Or russia may be bigger. But saudi arabia can produce more oil given all of the reserves you have. You are quite comfortable at the level you are producing, about 9 million or 10 Million Barrels a day . Yasir its about 10 billion barrels a day. David its often said in the oil world saudi has the cheapest or lowest lifting costs, which means that you can extract oil more cheaply than anybody else, because it is either close to the surface, or things related to that. Is that more or less yasir it is true, less than three dollars, four dollars. It is why the other companies costs are between 20 and 50. David in terms of saudi aramco, what are the Biggest Challenges that you face there . Getting the ipo done, i guess, was the biggest. Yasir for the past five years, then i was part of the ipo committee. Things were not going as i thought they should be going, so i had a number of discussions with committee members, and i told them we have to do it this way, and i had the same discussions with the government and the crown prince. After a while, i was appointed chairman of that committee, the ipo committee. It was last summer. We said we have to get the ipo done before the end of 2019. We got it done. That was a huge challenge. The valuation was amazing. The demand that we got was really great, almost five times the offer priced. So that was the initial challenge. David what would you like people to know about saudi arabia . Yasir saudi arabia is progressing every day. And the progress that we are witnessing is amazing. Yasir welcome to riyadh, welcome to the future Investment Initiative 2019. David in recent years, you have instituted a conference in riyadh, which is an annual event, not unlike davos, where it is a gathering of the elites of the investment world, and they come by the conference you sponsor. Why do you do that conference . Are you going to continue to do that . Yasir we will definitely continue to do it. Now the conference has transformed into an institution. So now it is the fii institution. We have done it for the third year in a row, and we will continue doing it every year. And it is going to be all grantees conference. David the crown prince announced a project, i assume you are investing in, to build a new city. Is that something youre involved with, as well . Or some of the people you have invested with . Yasir it is part of pifs portfolio companies. We have six different investment levels. It is on top of these gigaprojects. We have another three gigaprojects, and in addition to the other pool of real estate and infrastructure. David for people who have never been to saudi arabia, you would say what they should know that they might not know is what . That it is different than they might think . The image may be different than they might think . What would you want people to know about saudi arabia . Yasir saudi arabia is progressing every day. The progress we are witnessing is amazing. We are opening up the tourism sites in saudi arabia. Its like one of the best in the world. My last vacation with the family, we were debating between skiing or doing something else, then we ended up during the holidays. It was just an amazing location. David when you are the head of your family, and you want to go to a certain place, do you say, im the head of saudi aramco, pif, and this is where we are going to go . Or do the children get to vote . Yasir that doesnt work with my wife and children. No, it doesnt. [laughs] david today, saudi arabia is a kingdom, theres a king, crown prince, a royal family. Is saudi arabia governed much differently from countries in the gulf or other countries in the middle east . Yasir if you look at the middle east, if you look at the world, actually, we have the same system since the 1930s, when the third saudi kingdom came into existence. The good thing about the regime we have in saudi, it is progressing and developing over the years. Thats why we have reform after reform. The latest reforms we had are really good. It started in the economic and social, and now it is going to the security and political reform. It is the same system that has been there for the past 80 or 90 years. David so today, if you were looking at the future of saudi arabia, you would like it to be much less dependent on oil in 20 or 30 years than it is today . I assume. Is that right . Yasir yes. David your other goals are to make saudi arabia, as a citizen of saudi arabia, is to make it more comparable to other western countries, in terms of the Business Community . Yasir we are opening up saudi. David you are diversifying. Yasir oh, absolutely. We are opening up the saudi economy. Saudi is open for business. David you are the chairman of saudi aramco. That must take some time. Yasir yes. David then you are the chief executive of the pif, that takes some time, but you must have a little time for one of your hobbies, which is golf. You are also the chairman of the National Golf yasir saudi golf federation. David saudi golf federation. Are there a lot of golf courses in saudi arabia . Yasir not yet. We have, like, four or five of them, the grass golf courses. Historically speaking, aramco had about maybe 14 to 20 desert golf courses. Golf started in the kingdom long ago in the 1930s, when aramco started. Most of the American Engineers who came in started playing golf just in the desert. David i assume that sand traps were big. [laughter] it wasnt hard to get the sand to the sand traps. You are a 12 handicap golfer . Yasir about, yes. David are you going to get to scratch . Yasir i dont think i have the talent. [laughs] david but you have played in major tournaments. Yasir yes, we had the second Saudi International tournament, which is part of the european pga tour. David right. Yasir last year, we had four out of the top five players in the world. This year, we had also three out of the top five players in the world. Next month, we are to have the first ladies european tour, in march, and it is going to be an amazing experience. David if you are playing, you are the chairman of saudi aramco, pif, when the putt is three or four feet, do they give it to you, or do they make you play it out . Yasir [laughs] no comment. David from my standards, you are a teenager, very young, you have a lot more energy, presumably, than i have. Are you happy with these jobs, and are you going to do them for the foreseeable future . You are not going to be out in one or two years, five years, you love what you are doing . Yasir i am so excited about this job. The good thing about it is the impact that you are creating, and the impact that we are creating not only in saudi arabia, but the region and the whole world. David so why do you think some people do not believe that there is such a thing as Climate Change . Bill you know, they must not have taken enough science courses or something, i dont know. [laughter] david if you met with president trump, you could convince him on paris, to maybe get back in, or is that beyond your capabilities to do that . Bill someone else should do that. David so are you worried about the power of a. I. To disrupt our civilization, put people out of work . Those kinds of things . Bill the increased productivity that will come from a. I. Will create dilemmas. Would you fix your tie, please . David well, people would not recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. We will leave it this way. Alright
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