São Paulo – Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Middle East will build a new regional headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, hiring more than 6,000 staff in the region over the next five years, Saudi newspaper Arab News reported in its website following an interview with Riyadh Al Najjar, PwC Saudi Arabia senior leader.
The headquarters will be established in the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD). Al Najjar said the new base would dovetail with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, allowing the group to help clients take advantage of opportunities that arise. Vision 2030 is a Saudi strategic plant aimed at promoting the country’s economic diversification and growth.
Al Najjar added that he thinks the new PwC headquarters can attract other global firms to be in Saudi. The executive said the firm was encouraged by new Saudi regulations that welcome international firms to the Kingdom.
PwC Middle East strategy & markets leader Stephen Anderson also told Arab News that the strength of the Saudi economy as it emerged from the pandemic was encouraging. “Coming out of the pandemic, the transformation we have seen in Saudi Arabia so far, which has been remarkable, is only going to accelerate”, Anderson said.
The PwC executives believe the consulting market size will continue to grow in Saudi Arabia. “The consulting market in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) shrank by 12.4% to USD 2.68 billion in 2020 due to the global pandemic, however, it is expected to grow by around 17% in 2021,” Al Najjar said citing The GCC Consulting Market 2021 report by Source Global Research.
The Saudi consulting market fared best in the region during the pandemic only contracting by 11% and is expected to grow by 19% by the end of 2021. Al Najjar added that Saudi from a regional perspective, with all of the major projects and all of the transformation that is happening across the sectors, is a huge market for PwC and is a significant one for the Middle East.
The consulting firm has 1,500 partners and staff based in Saudi Arabia, over 40% of whom are Saudi nationals, and the group has plans to significantly boost this ratio, Anderson said. PwC has operated in Saudi since 1979, and has five offices in Riyadh, Jeddah, Al Khobar, and Dhahran, and will soon launch a new base in Al Ula.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
