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Carnival Corp. shares jumped after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund said it acquired an 8.2 per cent stake in the world’s biggest cruise operator.

Carnival surged as much as 18 per cent to $10.04 Monday in New York after the fund said in a filing that it holds 43.5 million shares of the cruise company. As of last week’s close, the stake was worth $369.4 million.

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The Saudis are getting a bargain-bin price for Carnival — it’s down 81 per cent this year — as the cruise industry faces unprecedented risks. The Public Investment Fund has invested abroad previously, including stakes in Uber Technologies Inc., Tesla Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund. But it isn’t generally known for making distressed investments.

Now, it owns a slice of the dominant cruise operator, with a fleet of more than 100 ships and no customers to sail on them — at least for now.

Carnival’s operations came to an almost complete stop last month after a series of coronavirus outbreaks at sea. Carnival’s Diamond Princess had more than 700 coronavirus cases, the biggest outbreak outside of mainland China for a time.