Saudi Arabia’s PIF appoints former Dow Chemical top boss as special adviser

Andrew Liveris will work closely with the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund on matters of strategic importance

Saudi Arabia's PIF has appointed Andrew Liveris as special adviser. Reuters

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), picked Andrew Liveris, the former chairman and chief executive of Dow Chemical, as a special adviser to help boost the value of PIF's portfolio.

Mr Liveris will work closely with the fund on matters of strategic importance, "in several areas and assist the fund in efforts to increase the value of the portfolio, and ensure the important contribution of PIF companies to the achievement of Vision 2030 goals", it said on Sunday.
He will be an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who is also the chairman of PIF, and the fund's board. He currently serves on the board of technology major IBM and Saudi Arabia's oil giant Saudi Aramco, according to the PIF.

The sovereign fund, which is the primary investment vehicle of Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and the top Arab economy, plans to increase its assets portfolio by to $400 billion by 2020. PIF holds stakes in some of the biggest publicly traded companies in Saudi Arabia including petrochemical firms, banks and other financial institutions.

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It is at the heart of the kingdom’s economic reform agenda and is the financial muscle behind entertainment resort Qiddiya, which at 334 square kilometres will be more than twice the size of Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Neom - a $500bn mega city and industrial zone extending into Egypt and Jordan - and a Red Sea project that includes a nature reserve, diving in coral reefs and heritage sites on about 50 islands, are among other projects PIF is undertaking in Saudi Arabia as part of the broader Vision 2030 economic reform plan. It is also among the cornerstone investors in the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son's $93bn SoftBank Vision Fund, with an investment of $45bn.

PIF last week announced the formation of an advisory board that includes 11 executives from across the globe's technology, finance and business spheres who will provide strategic guidance on developing the kingdom's Future Investment Initiative as a platform to attract investments.

Advisory board members include Mr Son, the chief executive of SoftBank Group, Joe Kaeser, the president and chief executive of German industrial giant Siemens and Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of private equity major Blackstone, which manages about $450bn of assets, according to PIF.