Saudi Arabia cancels next week’s ‘Davos in the Desert’ conference after series of Houthi attacks

In a major setback for the kingdom’s economic ambitions, Saudi Arabia has canceled a major conference planned for next week in Riyadh, amid a wave of attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

Known as “Davos in the Desert,” the Future Investment Initiative will now take place on an undisclosed date in 2027, according to a conference statement shared by email with CNN’s Becky Anderson.

Normally, the annual event showcases Saudi Arabia’s financial might and its growing role on the world stage. Wall Street executives including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and BlackRock boss Larry Fink were all scheduled to speak at next week’s event. However, the FII decided to cancel the October 26-29 conference following a series of Houthi attacks on the Saudi capital, including a deadly missile strike earlier this month on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. The move comes after a series of Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, energy infrastructure and other strategic sites, prompting a number of countries to issue travel warnings.
Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have exchanged near-daily missile, drone and aircraft strikes over the past week, with the conflict sharply escalating.

Some boards may have been reluctant to send their CEOs to Saudi Arabia amid the deadly battle against the Houthis.

“This decision was taken to ensure that our historic tenth edition delivers the scale, quality and impact that our partners, members, speakers and delegates expect,” the FII Institute, which runs the conference, said in the statement.

The organizers indicated that the new dates of the event in 2027 “will be communicated very soon” and that all registrations and partnerships “remain valid”.

The cancellation of this year’s event is a blow to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to diversify the oil-rich country’s economy away from oil and natural gas.

The deteriorating security situation is undermining decades of efforts to attract Western capital to the Middle East and could herald a period of investment uncertainty that would be detrimental to the region as a whole.