Richard Attias: ‘I feel more welcome here than in France’

Just for a moment in Les Deux Magots in Riyadh, Richard Attias and I forget we are in the Saudi capital and not in the more illustrious restaurant of the same name in Paris.

“A glass of wine, perhaps?” I suggest.

“No, I’m just rather busy this afternoon…” he begins, before remembering where we are. “Can you believe, I was answering you,” he says with a chuckle.

The Magots, in the new Via Riyadh complex next to the Ritz Carlton hotel, is his choice for lunch because it reminds him of the famous “Café Littéraire” on the Parisian left bank beloved by writers and artists since the 1930s.

“I spent 25 years of my life being there every Saturday and Sunday morning,” he says.

Open in Riyadh for the past year, it is the latest addition to the Magots global brand, along with Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. It is one of the signs of the leisure and entertainment revolution taking place in Saudi Arabia under the Vision 2030 transformation strategy.

Attias has been intimately involved in that plan since 2017, when he helped organise the first Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh at the request of the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and under the auspices of the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

The reason he is busy is that next week the eighth edition of FII will take place at the nearby King Abdulaziz International Conference Centre, and he is in the final hectic stages of organising the event, expected this year to pull in a record 8,000 attendees.

But he is gracious enough to allot a very Parisian two hours to a lunch meeting that will cover most of the subjects under discussion at FII8: investment, finance, economics, technology, and all other subjects that are expected to have an “impact on humanity”, as the FII mission statement requires.

It will all be carried off with the Attias élan that has pulled in superstars of business, politics, sport and many other areas. This, after all, is the man who arranged for American soul legend Gloria Gaynor to inaugurate the first FII after the Covid pandemic in 2021 with a live performance of I Will Survive.

I have seen Attias perform many times, in public and private gatherings, and know he is an accomplished and affable interviewer, but one who does not suffer fools gladly. He can be tough in order to get the best out of his staff at FII (where he is CEO) and at his own company Richard Attias & Associates (executive chairman).

Over lunch, he is all convivial bonhomie, but – even before we have studied the menu – makes a very serious point about the reason why he left France, after moving there for education from his native Morocco, where he grew up in the Jewish religious tradition.

“After 9/11, people were telling me ‘Richard, be careful’ of antisemitism in France. Then it was passive and below the radar, but now it’s so vocal. And not just antisemitism, but anti-everything. Anti-Islam for sure,” he says.

As we order, I make a mental note to explore that theme later on, and, over starters of crab tartare and avocado, we talk about mutual acquaintances in Dubai, where he spends a lot of time.

He relates interesting anecdotes of the Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, for whose “build it and they will come” philosophy he has a profound respect.

Many observers think the great changes under way in Saudi Arabia owe a lot to the example of the UAE, and Attias pays full compliment to the Emirates’ achievements, before getting down to the nitty-gritty: FII8.

“We’re not really trying to make each edition bigger than the previous one, in fact the opposite. I always say quality, not quantity. But it has spread through co-optation and word of mouth. A few weeks ago, it was only at 2,500 [visitors], believe it or not, but now it is almost 8,000,” he says.

That is double the size of the first FII in 2017, when the nickname “Davos in the desert” was born. Attias, who spent 14 years as producer of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in the high-altitude Swiss town, does not really like that moniker, but has learned to live with it.

FII has also changed significantly since 2017, when it was predominantly a gathering of European, American and Arab business people who were looking to do deals together on the back of the then-infant Vision 2030 diversification strategy.

Now, he says, “what is making FII unique is the diversity of people. We have a great group of people coming from Asia, bigger than ever – Chinese, Koreans, Japanese – who have not really attended before. We have more participants from Latin America, which was not the case before.

“And we have decided to have an Africa summit, because everybody is talking about Africa, the new frontier. That is very important, being African myself,” he says.

The nature of the FII has changed too, he explains. The transactional side to the four-day event is still evident; indeed, he rattles off figures for the value of deals done since the first one ($120 billion in total at seven events) and the expectation for this year ($30 billion plus).

That reflects the origins of FII, Attias explains. “When Mohammed bin Salman was Deputy Crown Prince, the first time I met him, he gave me a very simple task. He said, to support my sovereign wealth fund, the PIF, I would like to potentially own a global conversation every year in Riyadh where investors will come to understand where to put their money, in terms of geographies and in terms of sectors.”

Three years later, that proposal morphed into the idea of a more global event, which led to the creation of the non-profit FII Institute, independent of the PIF, of which Attias is chief executive. The Institute organises events all over the world – the latest in Rio earler this year – in pursuit of the “impact” goal.

It is a non-profit, but that does not mean it can take its eye off the commercial aspects of running a huge global event.

With founding member PIF, Attias now has a 35-strong cadre of strategic partners who each pay $2 million to be associated with FII, and who get attendance and networking privileges at the international events, including Riyadh.

Two years ago, the decision was taken to introduce a more general membership scheme, by which individuals pay $15,000 to gain access to the events and the rapidly-growing content bank of FII. It now has 1,300 members, Attias says proudly.

That cost is lower than many of the big global organisations that run the international forums circuit, he says, like the WEF, Bloomberg New Economic Forum, or the Clinton and Milken Foundations.

He points out that not everyone of the 8,000 expected attendees next week will be paying hard cash. “We cannot take money from any government on principle – they are our guests – nor from media and young entrepreneurs. But large corporations and big law firms can afford to pay,” he says.

By this time, our main courses have arrived – smoked salmon for him with Poilâne artisan toast and Isigny cream (“I am going cold today”), and grilled salmon and ratatouille for me. Simple, but delicious.

“Can you point to one germ of an idea that began at FII and has since come to fruition as a global concept?” I ask.

In fact, he can rattle off a number of projects in Africa and elsewhere that have had a big impact in renewable energy, job and infrastructure creation, and economic sustainablity.

He is also proud of the work FII has done to level the playing field between the West and the rest of the world in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment. Many in the USA and Europe are now turning against rigid concepts and looking again at variations like FII’s “ESG2.0”.

“As the governor of FII Yasir Al Rumayyan says, we should stop and fight against the dictatorship of ratings agencies. How can you put on the same level of the investment landscape in the USA and in Africa?” Attias asks.

That is a reminder that, although FII is primarily an investment conference, its flagship event takes place against the backdrop of investment-sensitive geopolitical events in a volatile region of the world.

FII7 took place in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, and there was much speculation that many, epecially Western, attendees would pull out for security reasons. Those regional tensions have, if anything, escalated in the past year.

“So when October 7 happened, of course, we were extremely concerned by what could be the impact for the region and the impact in the world. And in fact, we got almost zero cancellation. Literally the opposite. People wanted to come to discuss and to understand what was happening,” Attias says.

This year, the US presidential election will be on the minds of attendees, he believes. There are officials of the Biden administration on the guest list, as you would expect, but for a moment I wonder if it is possible that Donald Trump, regarded as a friend of Saudi Arabia, may put in a surprise appearance.

“No, I think he has rather a lot to do at the moment,” says Attias with a grin.

Another who will not be in Riyadh next week is the former president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who sparked the controversy of the week in F117 with a long condemnation of Hamas from the podium, much to the consternation of many in the plenary hall and on social media. “I presume he’s staying with the family just before the election,” says Attias.

On the question of which other superstars of business may show up in Riyadh, he is keeping his cards close to his chest, but promises some “October surprises”.

“We’ll have a strong message to help us have a better understanding about technology so we have some pioneers, some public figures, who I think will deliver some great messages,” he says tantalisingly.

I ask who he regards as the most interesting person in the world of technology at the moment, and he mentions Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. “Take your pick”, says the look on his face.

The quality of leadership is a fascination for him. He believes that the current polarised state of the world, and in particular the conflicts in Urkaine and the Middle East, represent a failure of leadership.

On the Ukraine conflict, he thinks the key lies with persuading the Russian president Vladimir Putin to listen to the views of his new allies in the expanded Brics alliance. 

“I saw 20 leaders coming and kissing Putin, which means Putin has some friends, which means that these friends should potentially oblige Putin to sit at the table with the Ukrainians,” he says.

On the Middle East, he believes the optimism of the Abraham Accords has been “destroyed” by the events of October 7 last year and its aftermath.

“I don’t know what is the solution, but we need to find a solution. This is a problem and an issue, which has been happening for decades and decades and decades and decades,” he says.

Now, over coffee, is the time to ask him more about the antisemitism issue. I wonder if, given his heritage in Judaism, he feels any hostility in the Middle East?

He replies with absolute conviction that it has never been an issue.

“I feel much more welcome here than in France, and I feel many more roots, common beliefs, and respect here than in France. Here and in Morocco, I feel I’m with my family”, he says.

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