PIF SACE financing: $3bn Italy-backed loans from 25 banks

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has secured about $3 billion in PIF SACE financing: dual-tranche credit facilities guaranteed by Italy’s export credit agency and provided by 25 banks, the fund said on Tuesday.

The package comprises a $1.78 billion tranche and a €1.035 billion (about $1.16 billion) green tranche, the fund said in a statement. SACE, Italy’s state-owned export credit agency, is guaranteeing the facilities, which follow a memorandum of understanding the two sides signed in March 2025 covering up to $3 billion of support. The lenders were not named, and PIF did not disclose the tenor or pricing of the loans.

Proceeds from the euro-denominated green tranche will go to eligible projects under PIF’s Green Finance Framework, which covers green bonds, sukuk and other debt instruments and is backed by annual allocation and impact reports. The fund said the wider facility is designed to expand trade and create procurement opportunities for its portfolio companies to buy goods and services from Italian suppliers across construction, manufacturing and technology.

PIF SACE financing broadens the funding mix

The PIF SACE financing fits a stated strategy of diversifying funding sources and instruments. PIF holds credit ratings of Aa3 from Moody’s and A+ from Fitch, both with stable outlooks, and says it was the first sovereign wealth fund to issue a green bond as well as the first issuer of a 100-year green bond. Reuters describes it as a fund of more than $900 billion.

Rasees AlSaud, Head of Financial Institutions and Investor Relations, Global Capital Finance at PIF, said the facilities reflect the “continued strength and depth of PIF’s capital raising strategy”. He added that under its 2026–2030 strategy the fund is giving its portfolio companies greater access to global markets and capital.

Michele Pignotti, chief executive of SACE, said the partnership would “unlock great potential for Italian companies to do business with PIF”. He said the initiative forms part of SACE’s Push strategy, which aims to increase procurement of Italian goods and services in high-potential export markets.

Italy’s growing footprint in Saudi Arabia

Italian contractors and manufacturers are already embedded in PIF’s giga-projects. Webuild announced about $600 million of additional works at Diriyah Square in July 2025, taking its contracts with Diriyah Company to roughly $2 billion, Arab News reported. PIF and Pirelli set up a tyre-manufacturing joint venture in October 2023 involving about $550 million of investment and planned annual capacity of 3.5 million tyres, with PIF holding 75%.

Trade between the two countries is also growing. Saudi imports from Italy reached SAR30.8 billion (about $8.2 billion) in 2025, up 2% year on year, while Saudi exports to Italy stood at SAR13.9 billion (about $3.7 billion), according to DataSaudi figures. PIF says it has deployed €98 billion in Europe since 2017.

What happens next

The facilities arrive as PIF leans on debt and partnerships to fund Vision 2030 projects, from giga-projects to its AI venture HUMAIN, in which Aramco recently completed the purchase of a 49% stake, while keeping its own balance sheet flexible. At the time of the March 2025 memorandum, PIF said a number of its portfolio companies had already secured more than $3 billion in SACE-backed financing, so the latest PIF SACE financing adds to an existing pipeline of Italian-guaranteed funding across the fund’s ecosystem.

Export credit agency guarantees typically allow borrowers to secure longer tenors and lower pricing than unsecured bank loans, in exchange for committing to buy from the guaranteeing country’s suppliers. PIF has not said how the new facilities will be split between the fund itself and its portfolio companies.

The announcement followed PIF’s FII PRIORITY summit in Rome, where the fund discussed joint ventures and procurement with European partners; its flagship FII conference in Riyadh has been moved to 2027. Investors will now watch for disclosure of which portfolio companies draw on the facilities and for further steps under the 2026–2030 strategy, which PIF has said is designed to open global markets to its companies.