The move brings Goldman into direct engagement with Saudi Arabia’s broader efforts to develop its financial services sector and diversify beyond oil-driven revenues. The country’s sovereign fund, the Public Investment Fund, remains at the centre of this push. In March 2025, PIF signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Goldman Sachs Asset Management to act as anchor investor in new private-credit and public-equity funds targeting the Gulf Cooperation Council region.
Rob Mullane, co-head of private wealth management for EMEA at Goldman Sachs, described the Saudi investor base as “exceptionally dynamic” and said the bank’s objective was to offer “local and global investment opportunities” to the region’s high-net-worth individuals. The bank is actively hiring staff in Saudi Arabia to support the expansion.
Goldman’s move follows its acquisition of a licence in May 2024 to establish its regional headquarters in Riyadh. That approval marked the first for a Wall Street bank under Saudi Arabia’s Regional Headquarters programme, which mandates multinational firms maintain a physical local presence of at least 15 employees, including senior executives.
The backdrop to this development includes falling foreign direct investment into the kingdom and a sharply increasing ultra-wealthy population in the Middle East. According to data cited by Financial Times, there were 0.9 million individuals in the Gulf with assets over US$1 million in 2023, totaling US$3.5 trillion. The growth in wealth-management demand mirrors broader efforts by Riyadh to position itself as a competitive regional financial hub alongside Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
To execute its Saudi ambitions, Goldman is blending global scale with local execution. Earlier this year the firm announced plans to scale up its Middle East headcount and office footprint. The local employment drive is intended to provide tailored solutions, acknowledging that Gulf clients often expect bespoke services rather than standardised products.
On the domestic front, Goldman’s partnership with PIF opens access to funds and credit vehicles designed to channel capital into Saudi-based corporate borrowers and Gulf-focused equity allocations. The MoU stipulates PIF will anchor funds that invest in companies domiciled within the GCC or with significant business exposure to the region. For Goldman, the combination of its private-wealth orientation and asset-management expertise positions it to leverage both inbound wealth flows and institutional investment opportunities.
However, the expansion is not without challenges. International wealth managers have historically found the Gulf region complex, with unique regulatory, cultural and client-service demands. As Dan Pinto, chief executive of London-based Stanhope Capital, observed of the Gulf market: “Many foreign banks and many wealth managers have tried to do it on their own in the region and usually have failed, and we felt that the odds of succeeding were much higher if we had a local partner with local expertise and local access to our target client base.”
The broader environment remains volatile: while Saudi Arabia rolls out major infrastructure spending and hosts global events such as Expo 2030 and the FIFA World Cup 2034 bid, foreign direct investment fell 19 per cent year-on-year in 2024 to about US$20.7 billion. For wealth managers courting ultra-high-net-worth individuals, these trends underscore both opportunity and risk.
Analysts note that Goldman’s strategy aligns with Saudi Arabia’s transformation agenda under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which emphasises financial-services liberalisation and capital-markets growth. Goldman’s earlier disclosures on Saudi Arabia forecast a “capex super-cycle” with US$1 trillion of spending across six strategic sectors by 2030, though only a quarter is expected to go into oil. The implication for wealth management: high-net-worth clients will look to participate in non-oil sectors, infrastructure, real-estate and private-credit vehicles.
Goldman’s presence in the Kingdom sits alongside a growing cluster of global banks expanding across the Gulf. For instance, the Bank of New York Mellon obtained a licence to set up a Saudi regional headquarters earlier this year, underscoring the competitive race to capture emerging wealth-management flows. For Saudi clients, the entry of such firms means greater access to international markets, but it also brings scrutiny to issues such as fees, local regulatory oversight and alignment with the kingdom’s economic-diversification goals.
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Saudi Arabia