Used. Will you fix your tie, please . David people would not recognize me if i fixed my tie. I do not consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I begin to take on the life of an interviewer even though i have a day job of a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . We are here today with his chairmany, who is the of saudi aramco and the head of the saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. You have both jobs, how do you allocate your time between running the Sovereign Wealth Fund and being the chair of saudi aramco . Doesnt that taking 80 or 100 hours a week to do . Aramco ishe chairmanship, i do not have executive chairmanship role. In aramco i focus on four things, the strategy, the annual targets that we have. And managing the actual board. I am the governor, and a board member. But my role is different. It is an executive role and i am there every day looking after our investment opportunities. I am looking after our portfolio companies. David and august 2015, you became the head of pif, what was the size in terms of assets and management . Totally different from what it is today. In 2015 the board was changed and became chaired by the crown Prince Mohammed bin salman. We changed the strategy. The assets and management was Something Like 150 billion, 330, 325s more than billion. Know thew well did you crown prince before he appointed you . I did not know him at all. I received a call. Was the ceo for Saudi Company ind that is a turned around from a losing company to one of the most Profitable Companies in saudi arabia. Had 41 of all Investment Bank activities. I got the call. David was it like an interview . He said, we picked you and you have to leave your job . Ani thought it would be interview, but it was like, here is what i want you to do. When he told me, when can you start . I said maybe three months. They said one month and you will do it. The next week i got a call saying you have to come in immediately. David what do you tell your family . You got a new job . We are all very proud to be saudis and participate in the changes, the positive changes the country is doing right now. My wife and my kids who are mayber, they all felt this is the right thing to do. David you have said publicly you would like to be the largest Sovereign Wealth Fund and get to a trillion dollars. Trillion. David when will you get to 2 trillion . Yasir the number looks big. Today it is about 1 trillion. We think it is achievable by 2030. I will tell you where the growth will be coming from. We are doing extremely good performance. Is the assets we get from the government like. Ifferent companies we are becoming a bank for the government. Number three, cash injections from the government. Recycling ofs the our profits. David all those Different Things require a big staff to manage. How big is the staff today . Yasir we started with 40, today we are 700. By yearend the target is to have more than 1000 fulltime employees in pif. David they will all be in saudi arabia . Yasir the bulk will be in saudi, but also financial capitals of the world. Hopefully in the second half of this year we will have our first office in new york. Potentially london also will be in the second half. We will also consider some in asia, most likely we will have an office either in china or hong kong, or potentially singapore. David some Sovereign Wealth Funds say their goal is to get the highest rate of return, whatever they can do legally to the highest rate of return in or out of the country. Is your mission to get the highest rate of return, or do you want certain goals like improving Energy Diversification in the kingdom or getting people to invest money in the kingdom . What is your principal goal . Yasir believe it or not, it is all of the above. We need to have higher returns, economic impact, positive economic impact, changes in the alsosity of revenues, being the engine of Economic Growth in saudi. Even we are looking to renewables and how to lower the emission in all of these tanks. David the printable goal of the crown prince is to make the kingdom less dependent on oil . Yasir absolutely. David i assume a large part of your budget comes from oil. Yasir yes it is. David you would like to get it below 50 . Yasir currently it is like 70 . The nonoil revenue increased tremendously in the last three years or so. Eventually we want to be less dependent on oil, and the reason being the volatility in oil prices, and the last thing, we do not want to have a volatile economy. The more oil revenue in the sustainable better and less volatile economy. David one of the visible investments you made early on in your tenure was a 3. 5 billion investment in uber. You are on the uber board. . Yasir yes. David did the uber call you up . How did that deal come about . That it came from an app i use, and amazing app, and i like the service. Servicee in, provided for the same customers for lesser prices. It is an amazing combination. The uber one of country,s visiting the and he was visiting me for something else. I asked him about uber, he said, yes we are considering a capital raised. I asked to look into it. We went through the governance structure, and we have players and players layers and whats of investment and have you. We came to the board, they all loved it. Yourself you use uber in the United States or in the kingdom . Yasir i use it, yes, a lot. David they must know who you are when you show up. Yasir maybe they do. David i think so. Another visible investment was a large investment, 45 billion in the first vision fund. What brought that about, and are you happy with that investment . Yasir the alignment is what brought it. I remember the conference, trying to strategize on what is exactly we would like to be invested in, of course it is the future. We said artificial intelligence, internet of things. These were the main things we would like to be in. Remember, 70 of our population is under the age of 30, so we need to have something sustainable for them longterm. Time, met for the first he was talking about the exact same things we were looking for. The alignment is what drove us to make a partnership. David you are happy with the investment . Yasir it is up so far after 2. 5 years, about a half million dollars. That is fine. David after you made a 45 billion commitment, did you have people saying what about 45 billion for me . Yasir not a lot of people came in with a 45 billion proposition, but we have access to everyone. Ofid you are the chairman saudi aramco, the largest publicly traded company in the world and the Largest Oil Company in the world. Yasir absolutely, the Largest Company from different levels, market cap, the prophet we are generating is second to none. David let me ask you about another job you have, you are the chairman of saudi aramco, which is the largest publicly traded company in the world and the Largest Oil Company in the world. Yasir absolutely, the Largest Company from different levels, market cap, the prophets we are generating is second to none. Had was thewe largest ipo in the world. David you went public not long ago. A valuation of 1. 8 trillion. Yasir the valuation was 1. 7, and now above 2 trillion for a couple of weeks, and now about 1. 8 trillion. David no company is as valuable as that company. Yasir none. David it is traded on the local Stock Exchange, have you thought about listing it in london, new york or tokyo . 2 of theonly offered company. 98 of the Company Owned by the shareholder, the government of saudi arabia. Our program is to have a multiple number of listings over the years. We are looking into it to have more offerings, and these offerings could continue to be in saudi, and if we have any Stock Exchange that can bring value and investors to us, we will definitely consider it. David Many Organizations want to be Carbon Neutral by a certain period because carbon contributes to Global Climate change. Do you want to be Carbon Neutral by a certain period . Yasir saudi aramco is working on their mission for decades. We have one of the largest, if not the largest production, but at the same time as a country and a company one of the lowest emissions for a good reason. We started early on to have more efficient. We have been working for the. Ast 40 years the concession we have from the government is about 60 years. Like most of the other oil and gas companies, their concessions are between five and 10 years. Want togo to a well, we make sure this well is big enough to produce more, and at the same time our depletion rate of these wells is very small. Some of the wells that we have 86 years ago or 84 years ago are uptodate operations. Having said that, oil is the cheapest fossil fuel, Cheapest Energy source. Today you have over a billion people in the world who do not have access to electricity. You have to catch up for those people. That is why we think we should be more efficient and at the same time should not forget who we are. David saudi arabia was the biggest producer of oil in the world, now maybe the United States or russia is bigger. Saudi arabia could produce more oil given the reserves you have, but you are comfortable with the level you are producing, nine or 10 billion barrels a day . Yasir about 10 Million Barrels 10 billion barrels a day. David saudi has the lowest or cheapest lifting cost meaning you can extract it more cheaply because it is closer to the surface, is that accurate . Yasir it is true, less than four dollars while other companies cost between 20 and 50. David in terms of saudi aramco, what are the Biggest Challenges . With aramcoe been for the past five years, then i was part of the ipo committee. Were not going as i thought they should be going, so i had a number of discussions with Committee Members and i told them we have to do it this way. I had discussions with the government and crown prince, and after a while i was pointed as the chairman of that committee. That was last summer. We said we have to get the ipo done before the end of 2019. We got it done, that was a huge challenge. The evaluation was amazing. The demand we got was really great, almost five times the offer price. That was the initial challenge. David what would you like people to know about saudi arabia . Isir saudi arabia progressing every day, and the progress we are witnessing is amazing. Yasir welcome to riyadh, welcome to the future Investment Initiative 2019. Avid in recent years you had conference in riyadh, an annual where it unlike davos is a gathering of the elites of the investment world, and they come to the conference that you sponsor. Why do you do that conference . Yasir we will definitely continue to do it. Hasact, now the conference transformed into an institution. The fii institution. We have done it for three years in a row and will continue doing it every year. Princethe crown announced a project i assume you are investing in, to build a new city. Is that something you are involved with as well, or people you invest with are involved with . Yasir it is part of pif. We have six pools of investments. Have another three projects in addition to the other pool of the real estate and infrastructure. Who have never been to saudi arabia, you would say what they should know about saudi arabia that they might not know is what . It is different than what they might think . What would you like people to know about saudi arabia . Yasir saudi arabia is progressing every day. The progress we are witnessing is amazing. We are opening up tourism and tourism sites in saudi arabia. It is like one of the best in the world. My family was debating between skiing or doing something else, and we ended up there in the holidays, and it was an amazing location. David when you want to go a certain place, you say i am the head of saudi aramco and pif, and this is where we go, or does the children get the vote . Yasir that does not work with my wife. David saudi arabia is a kingdom, there is a king and the crown prince and the royal family just as in other arabiaes, is saudi governed Different League other countries in the gulf . Yasir if you look at the middle east and the world, actually, we have the same system since the when the third saudi kingdom came into existence. The good thing about the regime , it is in saudi progressing and developing over the years. The latest reforms that we have are really good, they started in the economic and social, and now it going to security and political reform. It is the same system that has been there for the last 89 years. David today if you are looking at the future of saudi arabia, you would like it to be much less dependent on oil in 20 or 30 years than today, is that right . Yasir yes. David your their goals are to make saudi arabia, for citizens to make it more comparable to western countries in terms of the Business Community . Yasir we are opening up saudi. Absolutely, we are opening up the saudi economy and saudi is open for business. David you are the chairman of saudi aramco, that must take some time. You are the chief executive of the pif. That must take some time. You must have time for one of your hobbies, golf. You are the chairman of the yasir saudi golf federation. David are there a lot of golf courses in saudi arabia . Or five ofyet, four them, grass golf courses. There were 14 to 20 desert golf courses. Golf started in the kingdom long ago in the 1930s, and most of the american earne engineers came in and started playing golf , and it was just in the desert. David i assume sand traps were big. Yasir [laughter] i cannot get the ball out. David you are a 12 handicap golfer . Yasir yes. David are you going to get the scratch . Yasir i do not think i have the time to do it. David you played in major tournaments . Yasir we had the second Saudi International tournament, which is part of the european pga tour. Last year we had four of the top five players in the world, this year three out of the top five players in the world. We will have the first ladies in march, and it will be an amazing experience for us. David if you are the head chairman of saudi aramco and pif, if you have a putt three feet . , do they give it to you . Yasir [laughter] no comment. David you were a teenager, presumably young, more energy than i have, are you happy with these jobs and do it for the for seeable future . You love what you are doing presumably . Yasir i am so excited about this job. The good thing about it is the impact that you are creating. And impact we are creating not only in saudi arabia but in the world. When you move homes, you move more than just yourself. Thats why xfinity has made taking your internet and tv with you a breeze. Really . Yup. You can transfer your Service Online in about a minute. You can do that . Yeah. And with twohour Service Appointment windows, its all on your schedule. Awesome. So while moving may still come with its share of headaches. No kidding. Were doing all we can to make moving simple, easy, awesome. Go to xfinity. Com moving to get started. Haslinda if a picture paints a thousand words, then this is limitless. Aman who shot worldfamous photographer who focuses on culture. Flyer. 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