As US President Donald Trump began his first official trip abroad in Saudi Arabia, an investment company run by one of his top supporters, billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, secured an enormous investment from the Middle Eastern kingdom.
The company, which Schwarzman helped found, Blackstone, said on Saturday that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had committed US$20 billion to a new investment fund for infrastructure projects primarily in the US.
The commitment is about half of the capital Blackstone plans to raise for the fund. All told, including potential borrowed money, the new fund could invest more than US$100 billion in infrastructure projects, the company said in a statement.
The fund was one of several business deals between US companies and Saudi Arabia announced after Trump’s arrival.
At a ceremony on Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, General Electric Co said it had agreements for US$15 billion worth of projects.
The Trump administration also helped line up US$110 billion worth of arms deals, negotiations in which the president’s senior officials played prominent roles.
For instance, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner personally called the chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp to help reduce the price of a radar system.
Lockheed Martin has since announced, among other deals, a US$6 billion commitment to building 150 Black Hawk helicopters in the kingdom.
In its statement, Blackstone said it had begun discussions with Saudi Arabia about a year ago. The investment company said it had already invested in more than US$40 billion-worth of projects tied to infrastructure over the past 15 years.
Investing in US infrastructure has been advocated by lawmakers and business leaders for some time, with Trump and former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton endorsing modernizing aging airports, bridges and energy systems through public-private partnerships.
“This potential investment reflects our positive views around the ambitious infrastructure initiatives being undertaken in the United States as announced by President Trump, and the strategic opportunity for the Public Investment Fund to achieve long-term returns given historical investment shortfalls,” Yasir Al Rumayyan, the managing director of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure