March 18th, 2013
On Sunday, Prince Alwaleed said something important about the recent disagreement with Forbes. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he said:
“They are accusing me of market manipulation…This is all wrong and a false statement. We will fight it all the way against Forbes.”
Arabian Business reported on the interview, saying “In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph Prince Alwaleed said he will pursue legal action against the magazine.”
This is a big deal. A disagreement over a wealth ranking has just escalated into something much more serious.
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The Forbes article in question is Prince Alwaleed and the Curious Case of Kingdom Holding Stock (by Kerry Dolan). The article is mostly a (somewhat angry) response to a disagreement over the Billionaire’s List. But within it there is a big innuendo / inference / “whatever you want to call it” – about a “curious” relationship between changes in Kingdom Holding’s share price and the timing of Forbes’ Billionaire’s List calculation. It is this part of the article that Alwaleed has now openly called a false accusation of market manipulation.
This raises a new question: did Forbes libel Alwaleed?
Stock market manipulation is a serious crime. Is the accusation there? Alwaleed says it is. Was there an intent to harm? I’ll leave it to the lawyers.
Read The Rest →
March 15th, 2013
The recent Forbes article on Prince Alwaleed is angry. And not just a little.
The article (by Kerry Dolan) floats innuendo after innuendo. His company’s stock price movements “curiously” match the timing of the Billionaire’s List calculation. Alwaleed got “help” from his family in building his company and in making Western acquisitions.
It makes ridiculous, sweeping statements, such as “image is everything to Prince Alwaleed”, he craves “outside validation”, and that “his paramount priority…is Forbes’ list of global billionaires.”
And there is a nastiness that permeates almost every paragraph. His palace is “absurdly opulent”, his publications are a “big-bucks information dump”, his plane has a “throne” for a chair, his “twentysomething wife” must fit her life into his schedule, and so on. It’s hard to read the article without noting an underlying sneer.
But what really got my attention was the analysis. Forbes went into significant depth on Alwaleed’s business, his investment strategy and his behavior / operating methods. And it’s shocking. The analysis is bad. And not just a little.
Read The Rest →
February 1st, 2013
There was a recent article in the Telegraph about how Prince Alwaleed passed on the Facebook IPO. It’s an interesting and overlooked question. Why did he pass? And I think the article got the real reason wrong.
But first, please sign up at the upper right to stay in touch. Thanks.
Some background.
People forget Alwaleed has been buying tech companies in a big way for over 15 years. He is one of the largest and most sophisticated later-stage media / internet investors around.
He is a value investor at heart. As a financial investor located far away in Riyadh, his primary weapons in the tech space are his relationships (which are awesome) and his ability to deploy large capital quickly ($300m-$1B in a single day). Read The Rest →
January 29th, 2013
An interview with Kofi Bucknor, Managing Partner of Kingdom Africa Management and advisor to Prince Alwaleed
But first, please sign up on the upper right to stay in contact. Thanks.
In 2003, Prince Waleed made a surprising announcement. While the rest of the world was looking at tech stocks, housing booms and Asian growth opportunities, Waleed announced he was going to Africa. And he was going big.
It was a shocking idea. Almost no major investors were in Africa at that time. Africa was “stagnant”. Africa had political problems. Africa was the “lost continent”. The investor sentiment at that time could not have been more negative.
But Waleed is the world’s first global value investor. And he has, like most master value investors, a finely- tuned radar for when market sentiment is wrong or overly pessimistic. And Africa looked like a continent-sized mispriced value play.
Read The Rest →
August 27th, 2012
Interviews this month include:
- Fadi Arbid of Amwal AlKhaleej – on investing in the Middle East
- Vagif Karimli on opportunities in Azerbaijan’s rising oil economy
This month’s newsletter on global value investing is available for download here.
For future newsletters, please sign up on right.
All thoughts and feedback appreciated. This is a work in progress.
January 17th, 2012
Very cool news this week. My old boss jumped back into Silicon Valley in big, spectacular way. For those who don’t know the history, HRH was a big investors in Silicon Valley in the late 1990′s – and was most well known for his large investments in Apple a few months before Steve Jobs returned.
The WSJ article on his Twitter purchase is here.
October 12th, 2011
By Jeffrey Towson / 杰弗里·陶森
沙特王子阿尔瓦利德最近宣称他在建造下一座世界最高楼，高度超过1000米，可能达到1600米。它将俯瞰这个星球任何建筑，无可置疑这会是有史以来最伟大的地产项目之一。
这座大厦将坐落在沙特阿拉伯西部港市吉达，由阿尔瓦利德王子和世界最大房地产公司Emaar共同开发，后者建造了迪拜第一高楼Burj Khalifa——这座828米的大厦也是目前世界最高楼。以我在这座大楼工作几年的经历，我可以证实，摩天大楼确实比你想象中更酷。而下一座新的世界第 一高楼酷在哪里？
一，“摸天”的大厦
Read The Rest →
September 11th, 2011
Daily Mail has published fantastic pictures of the new Jeddah tower. The text is below:
Incredible new images of what the world’s tallest tower will eventually look like have been revealed.
The $1.2 billion Kingdom Tower, which will stretch 3,280ft into the Saudi Arabian sky, has so far only been illustrated through concept sketches and a rendering showing the bank-busting building from afar.
But these amazing artist impressions detail up-close what the exterior of the sleek, streamlined tower will look like and how the site will fit in with surrounding buildings.
July 5th, 2011
You can go to the Tradestreaming link to hear the audio.
The Tradestreaming Introduction is pasted in below. Note: in the audio my title was said to be Chief Investment Officer which is not correct. This correction is also noted below in the text and on their site.
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Saudi’s Prince Waleed took $30k and investing globally, turned it into $22 billion — all with staff of only 2 or 3.
He was able to accomplish this by applying a framework to invest globally. Like Buffett, Waleed is a value investor. But the similarities end there — Waleed is a deal maker, on the prowl to see where he can add value and how.
In this podcast, we’re joined by Jeff Towson, who was Head of Direct Investments Middle East/North Africa and Asia Pacific for Waleed** for almost 10 years. He’s written a new book describing the Waleed model,What Would Ben Graham Do Now: A New Value Investing Playbook for a Global Age. He explores the essential question of our day: how does a foreigner properly invest in emerging markets?
In today’s episode of Tradestreaming Radio, we discuss:
- ways global value investing differs from what Warren Buffett did so well
- how Waleed and others like him find and invest in value in inherently chaotic environments
- why global investing is a hybrid of investment banker, business development exec and investing
- what geographies Towson is looking at now for their investment potential
** In the audio of this program, I mistakenly refer to Towson as Waleed’s Chief Investment Officer. His correct title was Head of Direct Investments Middle East/North Africa and Asia Pacific.
