Saudi Arabia's NEOM confirms acting CEO as permanent head

(Corrects spelling of company name in headline)

DUBAI (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia has confirmed Aiman al-Mudaifer as the CEO of NEOM, the $500 billion mega-project central to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan to overhaul the kingdom's economy, Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF said in a statement on Thursday.

Mudaifer has been NEOM's acting CEO since November, succeeding Nadhmi al-Nasr, the long-time former chief of the ambitious Red Sea urban and industrial development project nearly the size of Belgium in the Saudi desert.

Reuters reported on April 22 that al-Mudaifer would be appointed permanently within weeks, a sign that the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund was taking greater oversight of NEOM, a source familiar with the matter said.

Mudaifer, who the source said has deep knowledge of NEOM and has been involved in monitoring the project's developments for some time, led the local real estate division at PIF and oversaw all local real estate investments and infrastructure projects.

"Over the past months, Al-Mudaifer has remained focused on maintaining operational continuity, improving efficiencies and accelerating progress across NEOM’s strategic projects and regions", the PIF statement said.

(Reporting by Hadeel Al Sayegh and Federico Maccioni; Writing by Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Jan Harvey and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

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