Wall Street’s top financiers opened the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh with a unified message: America remains the best bet for global investors. Despite rising debt and a government shutdown, some of the most influential CEOs said the US economy’s innovation engine will continue to attract capital.
The dollar’s weakness this year reflects investors’ earlier overexposure to US assets, but that trend is now reversing, said Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. Money is flowing back, he added, because there’s still a “deep belief in the opportunity in the US,” which is spending “more than almost anywhere else” on technology. Most investors are “overweight” in US assets and will likely remain so for “at least 18 months,” he said.
Bolstering that confidence, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said there isn’t “compelling evidence of an economic slowdown in the near term” in the US, and that a regulatory environment more permissive of mergers and acquisitions is helping drive transactions. While the government shutdown has halted initial public offerings, he expects new listings once the government reopens, citing America’s “deeply embedded advantages” in capital formation.
The biggest drag on the global economy — the trade war between Washington and Beijing — may soon ease, according to Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman. He said the upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this week is expected to yield a “very positive outcome.”
“Both presidents want to lower the temperature significantly,” said Schwarzman, who has been involved in some of the discussions. The two leaders, he added, are working toward a “much more functional relationship, which is good for the world.”