Saudi 'Davos in the desert' kicks off with talk of $50bn of deals

Saudi Arabia’s “Davos in the desert” investment conference kicked off on Tuesday with talk of inward investment deals worth more than $50bn.

Dozens of Western business leaders and politicians have pulled out of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference, organised by the country’s sovereign wealth fund, in the wake of the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi earlier this month at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.

Nevertheless a host of energy sector companies such as Trafigura, Total, Schlumberger, Halliburton and Baker Hughes said that they had signed agreements with Saudi state-backed firms adding up to $50bn.

The Saudi oil giant, Aramco, whose blockbuster flotation was postponed earlier this year, said it had signed memoranda of understandings with foreign firms worth $34bn.

However, analysts pointed out that some of the billion dollar deals had already been announced.

The Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, addressed the murder of the dissident journalist and former royal advisor while speaking on a panel.

“Nobody in the kingdom can justify it or explain it,” he said.

He added: “These are difficult days for us in Saudi Arabia. We are going through a crisis.”

Lubna Olayan, a Saudi business leader, said the killing was “alien to our culture and our DNA”.

An official Saudi investigation into the disappearance of Mr Khashoggi stated last week that he had died after a “fist fight” in the embassy and that 18 Saudi nationals had been arrested

The country’s deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to the crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, were sacked.

The Saudis had previously insisted that Mr Khashoggi had left the embassy safely.

The FII conference, which is in its second year, was conceived by the crown prince, the de facto political leader of Saudi, as a crucial element of his long-term programme to diversify the domestic economy away from its overwhelming reliance on oil and to encourage foreign investment in the kingdom.

The conference is being held at a site next to the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, where dozens of wealthy Saudis were detained last year as part of bin Salman’s anti-corruption drive.