PIF sells stake in US concert promoter Live Nation

Igor Vidyashev/Zuma Press via Alamy

• 5.7% stake cost $500m in 2020
• Parent company of Ticketmaster
• Fund cuts US holdings by 42%

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has sold its shares in US concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing. 

The sovereign wealth fund acquired a 5.7 percent stake in Live Nation, worth about $500 million, in April 2020 – just as the pandemic began to affect events and travel. 

Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, manages more than 400 music artists. It also controls about 60 percent of concert promotion at major venues in North America and owns or controls more than 265 music venues in the US and Canada.

Reuters/Ken Cedeno

Around the same time, PIF also acquired stakes in cruise ship company Carnival, Walt Disney, Marriott International, Booking Holdings, Union Pacific and Boeing.

In May this year, another filing to the US securities regulator showed that PIF had cut its American equity holdings by 42 percent to $20.6 billion. 

The fund divested itself of 25 companies, including a $602 million stake in asset manager BlackRock and a $942 million stake in Carnival. 

It also reduced its shareholdings in tech stocks including Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and PayPal.

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Last week the fund sold a $1 billion stake (2 percent) in Saudi Telecom Co. Analysts said the deal could mark the start of further equity sales as part of the kingdom’s plan to raise money for infrastructure spending.

“Further equity sales by PIF seem likely, although we can only guess in which companies because there are so many variables to account for,” Ibrahim Masood, senior director of equity portfolio management at Mashreq Capital in Dubai, told AGBI. 

The International Monetary Fund has lowered its GDP growth prediction for Saudi Arabia this year and in 2025 because of oil output cuts.