The phrase “more money than God” has been applied in throwaway fashion to Kerry Packer, Gina Rinehart and old mate with the dinosaurs loose in Coolum’s top paddock, Clive Palmer, all of whom are billionaires and all of whom are worth, collectively, the ashtray change of the Saudi Arabian mega-fund known as the Public Investment Fund (PIF).
Consider the apocryphal story of Packer telling a noisy Texan that he’d toss him for his $100 million fortune. Good one, right? Well, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud could toss Packer, Rinehart and Palmer – and you could throw in Rupert Murdoch – for all their money and laugh about it over his breakfast baklava.
Which is why sports writers (and mostly anyone, really) with a mortgage, three kids and a 10-year-old Kia Carnival have never been able to truly fathom why Saudi Arabia would hurl so much money at LIV Golf, the PGA Tour, and, of late, so many generations of Rahm.
But think of it like this: there’s plenty more where that came from.
The PIF – which is like an everyday savings account for special projects – is worth $760 billion and there are plans to make it worth – prime your best Dr Evil – one trillion dollars by 2025.
In 2022 Saudi Arabia’s oil company, Aramco, by dint of the country’s major export, the viscous black goop that powers the cars, recorded a profit of $438 million … per day.
The chairman of Aramco is the same chap who governs the PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, a golf-mad tycoon who wants membership of golf’s inner-upper sanctum: the R&A, the PGA Tour, DP World
