The stakes amount to about $1 billion: WSJ RIYADH: Saudi Arabia"s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), has acquired stakes worth about $1bn in major oil companies in Europe, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The unconfirmed report suggests the Kingdom’s wealth fund has purchased stakes in Norway"s Equinor ASA, Anglo-Dutch energy company Royal Dutch Shell, France"s Total SA and Italy"s Eni SPA. The PIF declined to comment. The fund built a stake of about $200 million in Equinor in the days around a sharp rally in oil prices last week, the Journal reported, adding it could not learn the size of the stakes bought in the other three companies, but that the combined stakes were worth about $1 billion. — With input from Reuters