Khashoggi fallout: CEOs in quiet exodus from Saudi Arabia’s ‘Davos in the Desert’, but the message is loud and clear
The fiasco around the conference shows how the kingdom is coming under mounting pressure to explain what happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a government critic who disappeared two weeks ago
The list of top business leaders withdrawing from an investment conference in Saudi Arabia this month grew longer by the hour in recent days, as an international uproar grew over the disappearance and alleged killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
From JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to Blackstone Group head Stephen Schwarzman and Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, the ranks are growing of top executives who will not attend the Future Investment Initiative, an event in Riyadh in late October that is known as “Davos in the Desert”.
The conference is organised by Saudi Arabia’s mammoth sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, and has been billed as a showcase for the economic reforms of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But it has been thrown into confusion since Khashoggi, a Saudi national and US resident who was critical of the crown prince, failed to emerge from a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
The conference’s website previously featured a list of speakers. But that has now been removed, amid the wave of defections.
“Now that Jamie Dimon has spoken up, it might be a tipping point like we had with Ken Frazier,” said Leslie Gaines-Ross, the chief reputation strategist at Weber Shandwick, the global public relations firm.