Saudi Arabia’s PIF secures $17 billion in loan

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday it had secured a $17 billion loan from a group of 25 banks that will partly refinance a loan it took out in 2018.

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) raised $11 billion in 2018 via a five-year loan from 15 banks, which “will be repaid early,” PIF said.

PIF is at the center of the Kingdom’s ambitious plan to wean the economy off oil and has pledged to spend $40 billion a year domestically through 2025 to help build new industries and create jobs.

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The new loan has a seven-year tenor and includes banks from Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia, PIF said, without naming them.

In October, PIF raised $3 billion with green bonds in its first foray into the debt capital markets.

“The new loan forms part of PIF's medium-term capital raising strategy and its 2022 Annual Capital Raising Plan,” the sovereign wealth fund said in a statement.

Fahad AlSaif, PIF’s head of global capital finance division, said the financing had “the longest tenor ever for a loan of its size that is subscribed to by an unprecedentedly diversified number of lenders.”

PIF will continue to explore a number of debt funding sources, he added.

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