Al-Waleed s business acumen and shrewd entrepreneurial prowess have earned him comparisons to American investor and business magnate Warren Buffett. Due to his rising prominence as a businessman, he was acknowledged by Time, who labeled the Prince as the “Arabian Warren Buffett.”[10] Al-Waleed began his business career in 1979 upon graduation from Menlo College. He returned to Saudi Arabia which was in the midst of the 1974–85 oil boom.[22] Operating from a small pre-fabricated office in Riyadh, he became active in construction contracts and real estate and amassed a sizeable fortune. He was first profiled by Forbes in 1988. Following the end of the Saudi oil boom, Al-Waleed altered strategies and acquired United Saudi Commercial Bank, an underperforming Saudi Arabian bank. He rapidly turned the bank around and through subsequent mergers with Saudi Cairo Bank and SAMBA turned it into one of the leading Middle Eastern banks.[23] His activities as an investor came to prominence in the West when he bought a substantial tranche of shares in Citicorp in 1991 when the company was in crisis. With an initial investment of $550 million ($2.98 a share after adjusting for stock splits, acquisitions, and spin-offs, according to Bloomberg calculations) to bail out Citibank caused by underperforming American real estate loans and Latin American businesses, his holdings in Citigroup now comprise about $1 billion. In 1997, Time reported that Al-Waleed owned about five percent of News Corporation.[24] In 2010, Alwaleeds stake in News Corp. was about 7 percent, amounting to $3 billion. In 2013, News Corp. had a $175 million (19 percent) investment in Al-Waleeds Rotana Group, the Arab worlds largest entertainment company. This review of his holdings also referred to the Al-Waleed investment AOL as if it was perhaps in the past.[25] His stake in Citibank once accounted for approximately half of his wealth, prior to the financial crisis of 2007–08. At the end of 1990, he bought 4.9 percent of Citicorp’s existing common shares for $207 million ($12.46 per share)—the most that he could without being legally obliged to declare his interest. In February 1991, he spent $590 million buying new preferred shares, convertible into common shares at $16 each. This amounted to a further 10 percent of Citicorp and took his stake to 14.9 percent.[26] In 1999, The Economist expressed doubts about the source of income of Al-Waleed and whether he is a front man for other Saudi investors. You could barely clothe a Saudi prince for such sums, let alone furnish him with a multi-billion-dollar empire. Nevertheless, by 1991 Prince Alwaleed had felt able to risk an investment of $797m in Citicorp, wrote the magazine.[26] Later, he also made large investments in AOL, Apple Inc., MCI Inc., Motorola, Fox Broadcasting, and other technology and media companies.[27] Al Waleeds stake in Apple was sold in 2005.[19] Al-Waleed also invested in Eastman Kodak and the airline TWA, these investments have both performed poorly.[2] His real estate holdings have included large stakes in the Four Seasons hotel chain and the Plaza Hotel in New York. He sold half of his shares in the latter in August 2004. He has made investments in Londons Savoy Hotel and Monacos Monte Carlo Grand Hotel. He currently holds a 10 percent stake in Euro Disney SCA, the company that owns, manages, and maintains Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée.[28] Savoy Hotel in London is owned by Waleed. In January 2005, Al-Waleed purchased the Savoy Hotel in London for an estimated GBP £250 million, to be managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts; his sister, Sultana Nurul owns an estimated 16 percent stake. In January 2006, in partnership with the U.S. real estate firm Colony Capital, Kingdom Holding acquired Toronto-based Fairmont Hotels and Resorts for an estimated $3.9 billion. In 2009, it was reported that Al-Waleed owned 35 percent of Research and Marketing Group (SRMG), reportedly the largest media company in the Middle East.[29] In August 2011, Al-Waleed announced that his company had contracted Bin Laden Group to build the next tallest building in the world, the Kingdom Tower at a height of at least 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) for SR 4.6 billion.[30] The original plan announced in 2008 called it برج الميل (Arabic for the Tower of One Mile) at 1,609 metres (5,279 ft) and an estimated cost of US$10 billion.[citation needed] In December 2011, Al-Waleed invested $300 million in Twitter through the purchase of secondary shares from insiders.[31] The purchase gave Kingdom Holding a more than 3% share of the company, which was valued at $8 billion in late summer 2011
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 08:43:45 +0000
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