Matthew’s view
When US President Donald Trump met with Gulf leaders last year, collecting trillion dollar investment pledges, sovereign wealth bosses in the region had their own ask: Make it easier for them to buy US firms.
The stumbling block has been the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has oversight on the sale of US assets. Gulf sovereigns (and other investors) have complained that the process takes too long and that it can be difficult to decipher how decisions are made.
Gulf funds have stepped up the pace of their investments and the US is a top destination, but they don’t like sitting and waiting for months for a deal to be approved. Or, doing a deal and then being forced to exit it later, as Saudi Aramco’s venture capital firm had to do in 2023 after initially buying a stake in a Sam Altman-backed AI chip startup.
The US Treasury Department is now working to formalize creation of a Known Investor Program, giving big repeat investors access to a fast track for deal approvals.
Yasir Al Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, said last year that it could invest much more in the US but that it was hampered from doing so. “I hope with the current administration, these restrictions will be out,” he said. He may be about to get his wish.
Notable
- The Trump administration was weighing including Gulf sovereign funds in a fast-track approval process for US investments, Bloomberg reported.