Davos in the Desert’s ‘old fox’ Richard Attias faces his latest test
Power broker behind kingdom’s flagship investment conference has weathered scandal and setbacks. Now he must contend with war and spending cuts
Richard Attias has spent decades bringing powerful people together at gatherings from the World Economic Forum to Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative, widely known as “Davos in the Desert”.
Now, even as war and spending cuts threaten the events empire he built from the kingdom, the 66-year-old appears unfazed.
“I am an old fox now, so I went through so many challenges in the past 40 years,” Attias said. “It’s part of the job. It’s sometimes disappointing but it’s not like the end of the world.”
First the Middle East conflict upended plans for an initial public offering of his events business. Then, this week, the 10th edition of the Future Investment Initiative (FII) was postponed to next year after attacks on Saudi Arabia by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
But Moroccan-born Attias, who arrived in the Middle East almost two decades ago in the wake of a tabloid scandal in France, is plotting another reinvention. He told the FT he had launched a boutique consultancy, North Street Advisory, aimed at helping global leaders diversify their economies, attract foreign investment and boost digital inclusion.
Attias brushed off the idea that investors would be deterred by the latest Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, which have killed more than 20 people, hit energy infrastructure and paralysed Riyadh’s international airport.
“You have a long-term leadership, long-term stability, politically, which is the main parameter for investors,” he said. “I’m not concerned . . . We had many big shots who confirmed that they would be landing in Bahrain and coming by road to Riyadh if the airport was not reopened.”
Attias styles himself as a discreet adviser to world leaders and a bridge-builder helping countries open up to business and investment.
Sunil John, a Dubai-based adviser at global marketing group Stagwell, described Attias as a “one-of-a-kind entrepreneur in the events and marketing communications industry” with a “bulging Rolodex of global leaders in both the political and business sectors that he can bring together”.
Other people who have worked with Attias, however, said he could be “difficult” and sometimes harboured “paranoia” about rivals.
Attias himself insisted he liked competition — saying he was a fan of late Intel boss Andy Grove, whose motto was “only the paranoid survive”.
He is accustomed to setbacks and unwanted publicity. In 2004 his affair with Cécilia Sarkozy, the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy — then French interior minister — was splashed across gossip magazines. Cécilia later reconciled with her husband and became France’s first lady when Sarkozy became president in 2007, but left him to marry Attias in 2008.
The scandal overshadowed Attias’s job of corralling the world’s most influential people to the WEF’s annual meeting at the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, according to former colleagues, and he eventually quit Publicis, the French advertising group that has long helped organise the gathering.
Attias had also moved in influential circles in New York. While working for Publicis he helped organise the Clinton Global Initiative conference, through which he came into contact with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein told British politician Peter Mandelson that Attias was “clever” and “full of himself” in an email exchange released by the US Department of Justice.
After leaving Publicis, he found an opportunity in the Gulf. Just before the financial crisis, as Dubai was fashioning itself into the Middle East’s business and tourism hub, Attias was appointed to lead a new government-owned company, Dubai Event Management Corporation.
While Attias hailed the business’s contribution “to the diversification and repositioning of the city”, three people familiar with his time in Dubai said the venture had struggled, and that it had been quietly folded up after the financial crisis struck in 2008.
Dubai nevertheless served as “a training ground for him before he went to Saudi Arabia”, according to one media executive in the region.
Saudi Arabia proved more rewarding. Having built up his own company, Richard Attias & Associates (RAA), he secured a powerful patron in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for whom he launched FII in 2017 as part of a drive to transform the oil-dependent kingdom into an investment and tourism hub.
The conference quickly became a magnet for Wall Street bankers, sovereign wealth fund executives, tech entrepreneurs and political leaders, cementing Attias’s role in the kingdom’s efforts to attract international investment.
But in 2018 Attias faced another crisis after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul sparked global outrage. Many executives and officials withdrew from the conference and Riyadh’s standing was damaged.
The following year, advertising group WPP, which was a 49 per cent shareholder in RAA, sold its holding back to Attias — although he insists he drove the transaction after Sir Martin Sorrell’s departure from WPP and that the timing was unrelated to fallout from Khashoggi’s killing. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has since built up a 75 per cent stake.
Attias’s willingness to work with authoritarian leaders has stoked controversy. A conference he arranged in 2012 for Gabon’s then president Ali Bongo was criticised by activists and opposition groups for costing too much and burnishing the reputation of a dictator, while his work for Saudi Arabia has drawn similar fire.
“Richard loves that world . . . rich dictators,” said one former colleague.
“I think it’s comments coming from people who are extremely — and, sorry to not be humble — jealous,” Attias retorted.
“It’s so easy to say that you are working for dictators while these people are visionary leaders, and they are bringing their countries to success,” he argued. “I am here always to support countries’ growth, countries’ development, always to support inclusive growth.”
Until recently, Saudi Arabia’s calendar of international events — including the 2034 men’s football World Cup and Expo 2030 Riyadh — offered lucrative opportunities for event organisers. But spending cuts and stalled mega-projects are undermining such prospects. In one sign of the kingdom’s pullback, it has been replaced by Kazakhstan as the host of the 2029 Asian Winter Games.
RAA’s close relationship with the Saudi state raises questions about whether it is over-reliant on a single client, but Attias denies he is dependent on the kingdom.
“We were always global,” he insisted. “We have offices in New York, in Paris, in Dubai, in Riyadh, in Africa. We’re just opening now in Asia ,” he said, adding that the company was temporarily reallocating some of its resources elsewhere while diversifying more broadly, particularly towards Asian markets.
Despite the turmoil, Attias said he was still preparing RAA for a stock market listing.
“It’s an important milestone,” he said. “It’s being listed and in a very good condition. It’s a statement. It’s a legacy.”
For now, the postponement of the 10th FII conference remains a disappointment.
“We had, in total humility, a fantastic programme ready,” Attias said. But “at the end of the day, you don’t celebrate an anniversary without your friends and family”.