PepsiCo begins headquarters relocation to Riyadh with senior leadership team

SAUDI ARABIA – PepsiCo is reported to start moving its senior leadership team from Dubai to Saudi Arabia as part of plans to relocate its Middle Eastern headquarters to Riyadh.

The snack and beverage giant is among the multinational companies that received licenses to move their regional headquarters to Saudi Arabia’s capital.

“The licenses were issued at the fifth edition of the Future Investment Initiative, attended by the world’s most influential leaders in business and government,” Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

The President of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, Fahd al-Rasheed, said in 2102 that the Kingdom expects the companies to set up regional headquarters in the capital and move to Riyadh within a year.

PepsiCo was one of the first major corporations to announce its compliance with the guidelines for relocations of the headquarters from the Saudi government.

Middle East CEO Aamer Sheikh moved from Dubai to Riyadh last month and said that other employees from the company’s “decision apparatus” would follow suit.

“It’s the first step in a long journey. We’re committed to being part of the Saudi fabric. And you’ll see us more and more in the transformation that you see taking place in Saudi,” he told Al Arabiya English on the sidelines of the LEAP conference in Riyadh.

Although Sheikh did not specify the time frame for when the company’s headquarters will eventually be relocated to Saudi, he noted that PepsiCo is working very closely with the Ministry of Investment (MISA) and the government to make sure that we can bring in the regional headquarters to Riyadh.

Since the program launched earlier in 2021, regional headquarters have been legally defined as a unit of a multinational group duly established under the laws of Saudi Arabia for the purpose of supporting, managing, and providing strategic direction to its branches, subsidiaries, and affiliates operating in the MENA region.

Saudi Arabia is currently looking to transform global perceptions of the country and move beyond its historical reliance on oil revenues, through its Vision 2030 economic development and diversification plan.

The country recently unveiled a multi-billion-dollar Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative and sporting investments.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the total investments in the food manufacturing and processing sector are projected to reach US$70 billion in 2030, an increase of approximately 59 percent over total investments in 2016.

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