Carla DiBello in Dubai in 2016.
Photo: Darren Arthur/Getty ImagesRIYADH—Businesses looking for cash from Saudi Arabia’s $300 billion sovereign-wealth fund, one of the world’s most influential investors, have found it helps to enlist a former reality-TV producer from Sarasota, Fla.
Carla DiBello, 35, has become a high-profile figure in Saudi Arabia’s investment scene for her connections with the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF. She is helping PIF negotiate a $445 million deal to buy a majority stake in England’s Newcastle United soccer team, say people familiar with her dealings. She has told acquaintances she was involved in talks around a $15 billion deal with Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., say people familiar with the discussions.
Ms. DiBello also has a close relationship with the Saudi fund’s 49-year-old chief, Yasir al-Rumayyan. Their relationship has raised concerns among some PIF officials, who have grown frustrated with his attention to Ms. DiBello during a time when the fund’s major investments are struggling, Saudi officials at the fund say.
She has been helping foreign companies gain access to top Saudi officials, sometimes via formal business meetings and sometimes in more casual settings, say the people familiar with her dealings. Ms. DiBello arranges compensation for her role in such deals, generally from the company seeking PIF investment or from others involved in a potential transaction, often through her firm, Sarasota-based CDB Advisory, the people say.
Last year in New York City, Ms. DiBello helped a Juul Labs Inc. executive get a rare one-on-one meeting with Mr. Rumayyan, says one of the people. An investment in Juul didn’t happen, the person says, but the meeting was a coup for the Juul executive.
International business executives have become wary of intermediaries paid to use personal relationships to facilitate deals. Compliance executives see a risk that such payments could violate U.S. and European anti-bribery laws.
One company hoping to do business with PIF sought legal advice on whether paying Ms. DiBello for an introduction would violate U.S. antibribery law, says a person familiar with the interactions. The company’s executives, this person says, were concerned about the appearance of paying someone with no clear financial expertise for setting up meetings. The investment hasn’t happened.
Yasir al-Rumayyan, chief of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, in 2018.
Photo: josh edelson/Business Council for International Understanding/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesPIF is run differently from many other international money managers, which typically make major investment decisions by committee and vet deals with in-house risk managers and lawyers to ensure they are done in the best interests of the fund and comply with laws.
While PIF has investment committees and risk managers, some major decisions on where to invest and with whom to negotiate are made by Mr. Rumayyan or his boss, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, without relying on the committees’ advice, say current and former PIF officials.
A PIF spokesman said the fund “has put in place a world class governance framework around all of its investments based on global best practice.”
PIF is the keystone of Prince Mohammed’s attempt to overhaul his country’s petroleum-dependent economy. Aiming to create a modern fund run by international governance principles, he is trying to use oil money to invest in new industries to diversify the country’s income and bring new jobs to its young, underemployed population.
Prince Mohammed has told people close to the Royal Court he wants Saudi Arabia to follow global business norms, these people say, cutting out cronyism and making sure people get paid for generating value for the kingdom, not for their relationships.
Ms. DiBello and Mr. Rumayyan, who is married, display a close relationship, say people who know the pair or have seen them together. They share a passion for golf, some of them say, and have been spotted dining together. They spent time alone together on a boat at a yacht event last October, say people familiar with the event.
At the yacht event, Ms. DiBello met business leaders on a megayacht Mr. Rumayyan chartered, staying aboard several days as part of a Red Sea boating event hosted by Prince Mohammed, say the people familiar with the event.
Together with her associate, British businesswoman Amanda Staveley, Ms. DiBello greeted SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son and Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani on the yacht, these people say. She participated in high-level business meetings, they say. On the event’s final night, Mr. Rumayyan took Ms. DiBello and Ms. Staveley as guests to Prince Mohammed’s yacht for a special dinner, they say.
Soon afterward, Ms. DiBello began telling people of her growing role as an adviser at PIF, citing her time spent with Mr. Ambani and Mr. Son on the yacht as evidence of her clout, says a person who discussed the matter with her. Mr. Ambani and Mr. Son declined to comment.
Images of Saudi King Salman, right, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in January in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Photo: Amr Nabil/Associated PressA lawyer for Ms. DiBello, Andrew Brettler, said: “There is no truth whatsoever” to the suggestion that based on her relationship “Ms. DiBello is able to provide foreign businesses with unprecedented access to Mr. Al Rumayyan.” Ms. DiBello “is an advisor to the various corporations she introduces to the PIF, among other entities in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia,” he said. Her company “specializes in making connections between the Middle East and North America and has been involved in more than $250 million of such deals,” he said. Ms. DiBello is close with Mr. Rumayyan’s family, he said. She isn’t a PIF employee and hasn’t ever been paid by PIF, he said.
The PIF spokesman said The Wall Street Journal’s account of Ms. DiBello’s role with PIF is “mis-representing of facts” but didn’t detail what facts he alleges the Journal has misrepresented. He said Ms. DiBello isn’t an adviser to PIF and isn’t paid by PIF, and that the fund’s deals are vetted by an investment committee.
“Under Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s leadership, PIF has assembled a talented senior executive team comprised of proven, highly respected financial and business leaders from Saudi Arabia and internationally,” he said.
Mr. Rumayyan declined to answer questions for this article.
Economic centerpiece
Today’s incarnation of PIF harks to 2015, when Prince Mohammed took a government fund investing domestically and made it the centerpiece of his plan to diversify the Saudi economy. The prince wanted to break what he viewed as his country’s overdependence on hired hands from abroad and use PIF to develop new industries, say people who have discussed the fund with him.
At the fund’s helm Prince Mohammed put Mr. Rumayyan, a former Saudi bank executive also known for his involvement in Riyadh’s golf community and love of Cuban cigars.
At PIF, some investments are driven by the sentiments of the crown prince and Mr. Rumayyan, say people familiar with the fund.
The PIF spokesman said: “In strict adherence with our charters, all decisions on where to invest PIF assets are always made by our investment committees.”
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, center, with Mr. Rumayyan, right, in Saudi Arabia in 2017.
Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Royal Council/Getty ImagesThe fund has invested billions of dollars in global markets with little of the discipline and institutional controls typical of investment funds of its size, say the people familiar with the fund. One outcome: Investors questioned its $45 billion investment in SoftBank’s Vision Fund after portfolio companies like WeWork parent We Co. stumbled.
Sometimes, Mr. Rumayyan’s office has told investment teams in PIF to meet with people whose involvement in the talks they didn’t understand, some current and former PIF officials said.
That was the case with Ms. DiBello in early 2019, when managers couldn’t figure out why they had been scheduled to meet with her when she came to PIF offices to pitch the Newcastle United deal, say people involved in the talks.
Ms. DiBello, who spent years in the entertainment industry, had little experience in banking or formal deal-making and doesn’t appear to have a university degree. On her LinkedIn page, the only education she lists is a Certificate in Private Capital Markets, a three-day university course. Her page says she sold insurance to high-net-worth individuals at an insurance-sales and estate-planning firm.
During talks on the Newcastle deal, Ms. DiBello was confident and engaging, says one person who met her then. In Saudi Arabia, where deals are usually made by powerful men with entourages, the person says, it took courage for her to come to PIF on her own.
Ms. DiBello proved adept at making contacts in the Gulf business world. In a region where it is rare to see a woman in a position of power, she built a name and a public profile for herself, getting to know another successful Western businesswoman working in the region, Ms. Staveley.
But she gave perfunctory explanations of the deal terms and couldn’t answer follow-up questions about returns and leverage, this person says.
Uber investment
Mr. Rumayyan and Prince Mohammed are friends with Uber Technologies Inc. founder Travis Kalanick. In 2016, after discussing a $1.5 billion Uber stake, PIF upped its investment to $3.5 billion so Mr. Rumayyan could get a seat on Uber’s board, the Journal reported in 2017.
PIF’s Uber stake is now valued at about $3 billion. An Uber spokesman declined to comment.
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Later, Mr. Kalanick came back to PIF proposing it invest in CloudKitchens, a business building commercial kitchens to cook meals for home delivery. To some PIF officials reviewing the deal before it was completed early last year, it had the hallmarks of a bubble, say people involved with the deal. They say senior PIF executives made it clear that when Mr. Kalanick came into the office, the investment team would ask questions and maybe negotiate on valuation—but would do the deal because that was what Prince Mohammed and Mr. Rumayyan wanted.
Martin Botha, PIF’s head of risk, told Mr. Rumayyan in a meeting that the cloud-kitchen deal was too risky, says one of the people involved. Mr. Rumayyan thanked Mr. Botha, the person says, and told him to stop talking. PIF invested $400 million in Mr. Kalanick’s kitchen business, valuing it at $5 billion.
Mr. Kalanick declined to comment. Mr. Botha didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In 2016, PIF agreed to become the biggest investor in Softbank’s Vision Fund. The Vision Fund’s investments helped push up valuations of companies like dog-walking app Wag that have since seen their values decline. Mr. Rumayyan joined SoftBank’s board.
The Public Investment Fund office complex in Riyadh.
Photo: Nick Potts/PA wire/Getty ImagesA year after the Uber and SoftBank investments, PIF still didn’t know the value of its holdings due to years of poor accounting, the Journal reported in 2017. Government officials’ estimates at the time ranged from $180 billion to $300 billion.
PIF did hire experienced financial managers from abroad for high-level roles, but many quit after realizing that they had no power to make decisions—and that PIF wasn’t run to the standards they expected—several former managers say. Many bristled at Mr. Rumayyan’s preferred title, “Your Excellency.” While it isn’t unusual for people of note in the Gulf to demand such a title, it was unusual to bankers from abroad who were accustomed to calling their bosses by their first names.
Ms. DiBello’s ties
Ms. DiBello’s Saudi Arabia ties stretch back more than two decades to a neighbor in the gated Sarasota community where she grew up, according to public records and her statements in the local press.
Close by was a house owned by Essam Ghazzawi, a money manager for family members of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed’s father. In her teens, Ms. DiBello became close with Mr. Ghazzawi’s daughter Anoud, who was in her early 20s, says a person who spent time with Ms. DiBello and Ms. Ghazzawi back then.
Ms. Ghazzawi left Florida for Saudi Arabia shortly before the 9/11 attacks. U.S. investigators later learned two of the attackers spent time at the family house while taking flight lessons, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation documents revealed through information requests and litigation against the government by a nonprofit news website, Florida Bulldog.
Ms. Ghazzawi, who now has a business designing custom abayas in Dubai, and her father didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Ms. DiBello moved to Los Angeles where she worked for an entertainment producer. When she was about 21, she got a job as an assistant to casino magnate Steve Wynn, she wrote in her column, “A Modern Role Model,” in Harper’s Bazaar Arabia in 2016.
“I still refer to the years I spent working with Steve Wynn as my ‘free Harvard tuition.’ It was the best business education I could have received,” she wrote. A lawyer for Mr. Wynn didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In Los Angeles, she worked for a movie producer and later helped produce “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” Ms. DiBello has spoken publicly about her friendship with Kim Kardashian and work on the show, and in Harper’s Bazaar Arabia wrote that Ms. Kardashian is one of her “best friends.”
A person close to the Kardashians says Ms. Kardashian and Ms. DiBello are no longer in regular contact.
After working on a Dubai film festival in 2005, Ms. DiBello had started spending time in the Gulf, she wrote in Harper’s Bazaar Arabia. A story about her last year in a Gulf publication said she had been going to Saudi Arabia since 2014.
She started her own company, CDB, in 2013, the year she left the Kardashian series, according to her LinkedIn page. Since then, she has increased her public presence in the Middle East, writing her column for the local Harper’s Bazaar edition and posting pictures on Instagram of herself with local leaders.
“I kind of am that voice for the people in the West coming to the East,” she said in a video interview last year. In other local interviews, she said she “helped a private equity group from the U.S. raise capital” in the region and is working on “nine-figure deals.”
In 2016, she and Kris Jenner, Ms. Kardashian’s mother, appeared in Dubai to announce the opening of a local branch of Legacy Business School, a for-profit university based in Trump Tower in New York. The Journal couldn’t determine whether the Dubai office ever opened, and the school didn’t respond to requests for comment over the weekend. A person close to Ms. Jenner says it was a paid appearance and Ms. Jenner isn’t associated with the school.
Ms. DiBello, left, with Kris Jenner in Dubai, 2016.
Photo: Darren Arthur/Getty ImagesOver the past year, Ms. DiBello has increased her public presence in the kingdom. She helped produce a documentary about Saudi Arabia’s hosting a Formula E electric-car race, bringing in a Hollywood production company. She posted an Instagram photo of herself with Prince Mohammed.
Early last year, when she came to PIF offices pitching the Newcastle United deal, two of the people involved in the talks say that they had no idea how she got access. They said a superior told them Mr. Rumayyan’s office wanted them to meet her. Some Saudi financial analysts were puzzled, wondering what she was doing there, one of them says.
Ms. DiBello told them that Newcastle United’s owner wanted to sell, that she and Ms. Staveley wanted to cut a deal for Saudi Arabia to put up the money, and that the two women would play a role in managing the business for a fee and get a portion of equity, the person says. A Newcastle United spokesman declined to comment.
Last month, the Journal reported the deal was close to being completed and that Ms. Staveley planned to purchase 10% of the team if the deal went through. The Journal couldn’t determine how Ms. DiBello would be compensated.
—Julie Steinberg and Lisa Schwartz contributed to this article.
Write to Bradley Hope at bradley.hope@wsj.com, Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Rory Jones at rory.jones@wsj.com
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