Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal is a Saudi Arabian multi-billionaire entrepreneur and grandson of Saudi Arabia’s first monarch, King Ibn Saud, and nephew of the last King, Abdullah Saud. His father, Prince Talal, was Saudi Arabia finance minister and his mother, Princess Mona Al Sold, was the daughter of the first Prime Minister of Lebanon, Riad Al Solh, who was murdered in Amman in 1951.
According to Forbes, he is the 41st richest man on planet with a $17,3 billions net worth in 2016.
In his teenage years, Al-Waleed was rebellious at the point to be enrolled in a military school by his parents.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from California’s Menlo College in 1979 and in 1985 he received a master’s degree in Social Science from New York’s Syracuse University.
After graduated from college, Al-Waleed borrowed $30,000 from his father to start an investment company which failed in the first year. So he was forced to start from scratch.
He returned to Saudi Arabia in 1980, experiencing the nation’s economic boom.
He started being a local representative for international companies that were investing in Saudi Arabia with enormous foreign direct investments (FDI). For every conducted deal he could received a commission that ranged from 5% to 30% per transaction.
His first contract came in 1982 when he was commissioned to construct a club for South Korean-based company.
In that moment, Prince Al-Waleed had enough cash to slowly build a modest real estate portfolio, The Kingdom Holdings Company, and, thanks to Saudi Arabia no income taxes, he amassed a personal net worth of $1 billion by 1989.
In the 80s, he could diversified his own company Kingdom Holdings investment portfolio.
One of his most remarkable investment was the acquisition of 7% equity stake of United Saudi Commercial Bank, a traded local bank that was collapsing.
Through a hostile takeover, he worked with the shareholders of the bank to change his management and overall direction.
The strategy was successful and the bank survived. Then Al-Waleed acquired that bank through Kingdom’s largest financial institution, Samba Financial Group.
In 90s his name began to be known in western business world.
In those years, Citigroup (now Citycorp) had a lot of financial problems and could’t pay its many loans.
Everybody though it was the end of the bank, but Al-Waleed didn’t and purchased 4,9% stake of the company at the price of $207 millions. In fact, Citigroup didn’t failed and now is Kingdom Holdings investments core part (almost half of Citicorp belongs to the Prince).
Kingdom Holdings Company, his very own company (95%) founded in 1980, has a very diversified portfolio with equity stakes in many worldwide companies like AOL, Apple (until 2005), Amazon, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Disneyland Paris, Fox News, Twitter. Its market capitalization is more than $1 billion.
Al-Waleed bin Talal is also big filantropist, he has a lot of charity activities in Middle East, Asia and Africa. They said he donates almost $100 millions per year to increase education in the world, filling up cultural and sanitary gaps between West and East in the world.
BUSINESS 4 BEGINNERS 