Daily Times

Corporate bigwigs are pulling out of an investment conference in Saudi Arabia next week concerned by the fate of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, despite the risk of losing business with the kingdom.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde was planning to attend but her Middle East trip has been “deferred”, an IMF spokesman said in a statement, without further explanation.

US President Donald Trump has said that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will decide by Friday whether he will still go to the October 23-25 Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh.

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.

Among those shunning the Riyadh conference, according to official confirmations or reports by Bloomberg News and CNBC among others:

Finance

— HSBC chief executive John Flint

— Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam

— MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga

(HSBC, Credit Suisse and MasterCard are listed among the eight “strategic partners” of the conference. Another is Siemens, whose boss Joe Kaeser says he is still deciding about whether to come.)

— BNP Paribas chairman Jean Lemierre

— Societe Generale CEO Frederic Oudea

— JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon

— BlackRock chief Larry Fink

— Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

— Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters.

Industry/Technology

— Ford chairman Bill Ford

— Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi

— British billionaire Richard Branson

— Thrive CEO Ariana Huffington

— Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene.

Media

— Viacom CEO Bob Bakish.

In addition, multiple media groups have withdrawn executives or journalists who were due to join panels at the conference, including CNN, Bloomberg, The Economist, the New York Times, CNBC and the Financial Times.

Published in Daily Times, October 18^th 2018.