Mohammed Saif Al-Sowaidi

If one is aiming to become a global real estate investor, it helps to have an oil-rich (if controversial) sovereign nation at your back. 

The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) is one such entity, having been founded in 2005 by then-Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani as a means to re-invest the country’s oil and natural gas surplus. The QIA is currently led by Mohammed Saif Al-Sowaidi, a Qatari national and University of Missouri alum (double major in statistics and finance).

The QIA’s activity is opaque by nature, as the organization does not publicly publish its holdings. Yet the Doha-based fund is estimated to have upward of $526 billion of assets under management, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, with much of its portfolio tied up in private equity and listed shares.

The QIA does make highly visible real estate deals across the globe, however, particularly in New York City. The organization has injected billions into projects across Manhattan, including a $3.8 billion investment in 2015 into Brookfield’s 7 million-square-foot, mixed-use Manhattan West project, per reports at the time. About a year later, it paid $622 million to purchase a roughly 10 percent stake in Empire State Realty Trust, the real estate investment trust that owns the Empire State Building and several other holdings.

The organization, through its affiliates, also controls a stable of high-end luxury hotels across the globe. In Manhattan, that includes The Plaza, the St. Regis New York, and an 80 percent stake in the InterContinental New York Barclay. 

In 2023, the QIA dropped another $623 million for the Central Park-adjacent Park Lane Hotel, in what was ultimately New York’s second-priciest property sale of that year. Ironically, seller Steve Witkoff spends much of his time in Qatar these days as President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.