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Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has upped its holdings in Chinese equities, with e-commerce giant Alibaba seeing the most movement.
The kingdom’s $700 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) bought 153,500 shares in Alibaba in the first quarter of the year, increasing its stake in the company by 11%, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported based on the Form 13F filing on Wednesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
PIF’s holdings in two other Chinese American depositary receipts, Pinduoduo and BeiGene, was unchanged from the previous quarter, the news report stated.
According to SCMP, PIF has boosted its position in Alibaba for a second time in less than a year. At the end of the quarter, the sovereign wealth fund held 1.61 million shares in the e-commerce giant, nearly tripling its stake since it initiated a position during the September quarter of 2021, the filings showed.
PIF held a total of 38 stocks worth $20.5 billion at the end of the first quarter.
The same 13F filing revealed PIF had also cut down on its US stocks in the first quarter of the year, slashing the value of the direct holdings in those equities by nearly half. PIF, which held US-traded stocks with a value of $35 billion by year-end 2023, saw its holdings down to $18 billion as of March 31, according to a Bloomberg report.
(Writing by Bindu Rai, editing by Seban Scaria)
