BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, has opened an office in Saudi Arabia, according to reports, as the company continues forward with plans to capitalize on the government’s economic reforms.
A company spokeswoman told Reuters the BlackRock Riyadh office had “opened recently and is headed by Yazeed Almubarak,” the news service reports. Almubarak previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment.
BlackRock has remained interested in opportunities in the Saudi market even through the fallout created by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October. The New York-based company was a “substantial investor” in Saudi Aramco’s inaugural dollar bond earlier this year.
In May, BlackRock and HSBC launched dedicated Saudi Arabia investment funds, just one month after BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink and HSBC’s John Flint attended a financial conference held in Riyadh.
Fink said of his interest in investment in Saudi Arabia earlier this year: “The region is not perfect. No region in the world is perfect…The fact that there are issues in the press doesn’t tell me I should run from a place, it tells me we should run to a place.”
