Chinese electronics maker Lenovo pushed forward with plans to establish its regional headquarters in Riyadh, cementing a tie-up with the kingdom’s ALAT and delivering a win for Saudi efforts to lure major international companies to establish hubs in the country.
The move deepens a partnership that aims to build millions of devices a year in the kingdom: ALAT, a unit of the kingdom’s powerful sovereign wealth fund, invested $2 billion in Lenovo this year, while Lenovo said last week it had appointed ALAT chief executive Amit Midha as a non-executive director.
Lenovo’s expansion into Saudi Arabia is the latest win for Riyadh’s strategy of using state resources and contracts to back foreign firms that agree to use the kingdom as a hub for their Middle East operations. It has already attracted the likes of Amazon, BlackRock, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft to establish regional HQs in the Saudi capital, though as Semafor has previously reported, some have been flummoxed by the requirements of doing so.