Donald Trump quietly shut down companies in Saudi Arabia after winning the election

Donald Trump closed down a number of his businesses in the days after the election, including four companies with ties to ventures in Saudi Arabia. 

The President-elect has sparked significant concern in the month after his successful bid for the White House for clear conflicts of interest, as he continues to hold a stake in his businesses – including an executive producer credit on his NBC reality series Celebrity Apprentice. 

Mr Trump is expected to outline changes he has made to his business in an address on 15 December. 

Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organisation, said that the shuttering of the four businesses was simply routine “housecleaning”. He added that Mr Trump had no existing business venture in Saudi Arabia.

“I’m not aware of any deal in Saudi Arabia,” he told the Associated Press. “I’ll go further, there is no deal in Saudi Arabia.”

But according to



corporate registrations, Mr Trump started eight companies that include the major Saudi city, Jeddah, in their official names. Half of those companies shut down throughout the year, and the final half were included in the dissolution a week after the election. 

It is not unusual for Mr Trump to include the name a company after the location of the project. Companies he established in Indonesia and India, for instance, are named after the cities in which they took place.

The Saudi royal family has close ties to the businesses that operate in the country, and it poses a potential conflict for the President-elect to have opened businesses in that region. 

Lori Plotkin Boghardt, a Washington Institute fellow, told the AP that while it is important for the US president to be close to the Saudi king and crown prince, “we also want to have a president who can talk frankly to the Saudis about any complications in the relationship and uphold American interests."