A few months before Newcastle United clinched a return to Europe’s top football competition the Champions League after two decades on the sidelines, Yasir al-Rumayyan flew the team to his Riyadh residence for a December pep talk.
It had been just over a year since the club’s acquisition by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and the 53-year-old PIF chief and Newcastle chair rallied the players with a speech before they bonded over a game of simulated golf.
While Newcastle was experiencing a turnround in its fortunes, Rumayyan’s other big sports venture, the upstart LIV golf tour, was flailing as it struggled to attract sponsors and battled with the US PGA in the law courts. The foray into golf, a personal obsession of Rumayyan’s, did not seem promising.
This month’s announcement that LIV and the PGA were joining forces, with Rumayyan as chair, took many observers by surprise. While the plan still faces obstacles, including scrutiny from US lawmakers, it has elevated Rumayyan’s reputation as one of the world’s most influential sovereign wealth fund heads.
A confidant to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Rumayyan is charged with overseeing investments and reforms that are dear to the royal. Some attribute his rising profile to acting as a yes-man to the ruler, others to his management skills and the occasional stroke of luck.
The 2021 decision to set up LIV “was a crazy idea, it was such a long shot”, recalled a Saudi former colleague who is familiar with his career. “But if God is smiling on you . . . .
Born in the Saudi province of Al-Qassim, Rumayyan graduated from a local university before going into banking. He worked his way up the Saudi Hollandi bank before a stint in the Capital Markets Authority. By 2015 he was heading financial services provider Saudi Fransi Capital when then deputy Crown Prince Mohammed tapped him for the PIF.
“I didn’t know him at all . . . I thought it was going to be an interview but it was like, ‘here’s what I want you to do’,” Rumayyan recounted in a 2020 interview with Bloomberg.
As governor of the PIF, Rumayyan oversees $650bn in assets, including its $45bn bet on Japanese technology group Softbank’s Vision Fund, $20bn in a Blackstone infrastructure fund and a stake in Uber that gave him a seat on the ride-hailing group’s board before he stepped down to focus on other commitments.
He also chairs Saudi Aramco, a job he took as the state oil company was preparing for an initial public offering whose proceeds would go to the fund, which has also been transferred 8 per cent of the company.
One foreign executive said Rumayyan’s diary was so crowded that when he sought a meeting with the PIF chief, he was given a 15-minute slot more than three months away.
Navigating domestic matters might be his biggest challenge, as well as the riskiest. Rumayyan’s role as governor of the investment fund, which is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed, places him at the forefront of the kingdom’s drive to diversify its economy beyond oil.
Ministers and men of Rumayyan’s standing often have a short shelf life in Saudi Arabia. The crown prince replaces them at will and is intolerant of mistakes or people standing in his way.
The PIF-led reforms, involving a number of vast projects and investments in nascent industries from electric vehicles to gaming and vapes, are seen as crucial by the crown prince to winning support at home as he prepares to eventually succeed his father King Salman, one western diplomat said.
Rumayyan has received both plaudits and criticism for the domestic activities of the PIF, which in building up national champion companies to jump-start lagging sectors such as housing has crowded out private sector actors.
He has outlasted many peers. His secret? “God has mercy on a man who knows the limits of himself,” said the Saudi former colleague, quoting an Arab proverb.
Some people familiar with the PIF say Rumayyan delegates the day-to-day affairs of the fund and his growing empire. He is also close to outside advisers, such as Wall Street dealmaker Michael Klein.
“It’s typical Saudi leadership,” said one former senior official at the fund. “You round up the people around you, and it’s a top-down leadership. You take the order and try to execute, and where you don’t know, you bring in consultants.”
Rumayyan is open to those offering counsel, according to the former colleague. “Every top banker in the world is fighting to give them advice,” he said. “He listens to it, and he is a hard worker.”
A bon vivant, he has thrown dinner parties at his home on the eve of the PIF-organised Future Investment Initiative, the “Davos in the Desert” summit that seeks to project the new Saudi Arabia to the global elite.
People who know him say Rumayyan is affable, as well as friendly and obliging when crowded by journalists and business suitors. With his coiffed curly hair, Roman nose and tailored suits, he cuts a distinctive figure when he shows up at St James’ Park to cheer on Newcastle.
But he has never been regarded as any sort of business or networking genius, several people who have known him since his banking days told the Financial Times.
That he has managed to impress and win the trust of Prince Mohammed has baffled some observers.
“He’s a nice guy [but] I was surprised he got the job,” said one banker who has met him over the years.
Others view his rise as a measure of pliability and readiness to please the crown prince. He has a chummy relationship with Prince Mohammed, one adviser said, laughing and joking with him. But he remains deferential.
“In order to go somewhere in that part of the world you’ve got to be at least somewhat acquiescent to how things are going,” said the former PIF official.
Rumayyan’s adviser said he was attuned to the scale of the prince’s transformation project for the kingdom, challenging bankers’ scepticism and encouraging more ambitious proposals to satisfy his boss.
Supporters say Rumayyan deserves credit for his achievements.
“Yasir has a record of doing better than everybody expected him to do,” said one executive with a company that works with the PIF. “In the beginning it was not unusual for people to say ‘really?’ when they met him. But he’s got some talent, he’s resilient and doesn’t take himself too seriously.”
Additional reporting by Simeon Kerr in Dubai
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