Attended by prominent figures such as tech billionaire Michael Dell, Blackstone chief Stephen Schwarzman and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s $925bn Public Investment Fund, the FII Priority conference in Miami in February was one of the most high-profile business events in the US this year. The first morning audience listened to former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo who warned the investors that it had become “impossible to separate geopolitical risk from capital allocation”.
“One thing that I think we’ve all learnt over the last 10 years is that seeing geopolitics clearly is really hard,” he says. “Heading into more uncertainty, will be helping our portfolio managers how you manage uncertainty, how you manage war, and how war unfolds.” Even though most benchmark stock indexes like the S&P 500 have remained buoyant, there are some signs beneath the surface that the industry is integrating geopolitics into more of its investment decisions.