The story of how and why the Saudi regime ended up owning Newcastle United football club – with the active help of the British government – starts some years ago.
In 2018, the Saudi regime was in real trouble. Barack Obama’s fracking boom had made the US self-sufficient in oil, depriving Riyadh of its biggest market and driving down global petroleum prices. Government funds were suffering and the House of Saud was forced to introduce a controversial 5% sales tax, which increased to 15% in 2020.
In 2017, attempts to slash wages and benefits for public employees – who make up around two-thirds of all workers in the Gulf state – were abandoned due to fear of civil unrest. Under its ‘Vision 2030’, the country was keen to offload some of that payroll on to the private sector by diversifying its economy, but that required foreign investment, which had fallen from a peak of 8.5% of Saudi GDP in 2009 to just 0.2% in 2017.
