Spear’s Review

Moroccan-born Richard Attias helped Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum (WEF) turn the Swiss ski town of Davos into ‘Davos’ – a byword for a what was once universally regarded as the most important annual gathering of the world’s power players.

As the wave of globalisation that helped the WEF’s influence to grow has subsided, the organisation’s marquee conference has become somewhat less important, just as Attias (who ceased working with the WEF in 2008) has been building up another project.

As Attias told Spear’s in an exclusive interview, he and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) first began seriously discussing ‘a major event’ in early 2017. By October of that year it was a reality, as 3,500 financiers, central bankers and political figures arrived at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh for the inaugural summit of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) – or, as it was dubbed by the media, ‘Davos in the Desert’.

Since its inaugural outing FII has become a regular fixture in the calendar of the world’s power brokers and financiers. At the 2023 edition, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon were in attendance, and some $17.9 billion of deals were announced. Those made public included a joint venture between the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and Italian company Pirelli, as well as a large Saudi investment into a wind energy project in Azerbaijan.

FII now runs summits around the world, including in Miami, Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong.

Read next: How Richard Attias brought billionaires, bankers and politicos into Saudi Arabia’s big tent