Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding raises stake in UK's Phoenix Group with $73m investment

Group is one of Britain's largest insurance, savings and retirement companies

Kingdom Holding invested more than $1.3 billion in global equities in first half of 2022. Reuters

Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding has invested an additional 274.2 million Saudi riyals ($73.1 million) into the UK's Phoenix Group, raising its stake in the long-term savings and retirement business to 5 per cent.

The investment holding company, which is majority owned by Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, increased its share in the British life insurance and pension savings company from 4 per cent previously, it said in a bourse filing on Sunday to the Tadawul, where its shares are traded.

The move comes after Kingdom Holding said on Thursday that it invested an additional 228.2 million riyals in European insurance and asset management firm M&G, raising its ownership in the business to 6.4 per cent from 5.3 per cent.

Kingdom Holdings' investments are part of its strategy to build stakes in “prominent companies that are considered market leaders in their field, in line with the company’s objectives to diversify its investments into new and promising sectors”, it said in Thursday's bourse filing.

Kingdom Holding previously invested 1.06 billion riyals in the Phoenix Group in July last year, as part of efforts to boost its investments globally.

Founded in 1782, Phoenix is the largest savings and pension company and one of the largest insurance companies in the UK. It serves more than 13 million customers in the UK and Europe.

In the first half of 2022, Kingdom Holding invested more than 4.73 billion riyals in global equities, including $500 million in Russian energy companies as it continued to expand its portfolio of equity investments.

The company invested in Russian companies Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil, it said in August 2022.

Kingdom Holding has invested across sectors, taking or boosting stakes in companies including Twitter, Lyft and Uber, among others.

In May last year, the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, bought a 16.87 per cent stake in Kingdom Holding for $1.5 billion.