Wednesday, 15 June 2022

The #Saudi investment king who no longer rules alone | Reuters

The Saudi investment king who no longer rules alone | Reuters



The prince who's the international face of Saudi business may no longer be able to call all the shots.

For years, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Saudi Arabia's self-styled Warren Buffett, has made hundreds of millions of dollars by investing in companies from Citigroup (C.N) to Uber (UBER.N) to Twitter (TWTR.N) with almost complete autonomy.

Now, his Kingdom Holding (4280.SE) investment firm counts Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) as a minority shareholder and the powerful sovereign wealth fund is unlikely to sit on the sidelines, sources familiar with the matter said.

The wealth fund, which is at the heart of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's ambitious plan to diversify the Saudi economy, will want Kingdom Holding's investment committee to have more power over decision making than in the past, two sources with knowledge of Kingdom's business told Reuters.

"(PIF) will want to be an active investor," said a sovereign wealth fund investor in the Gulf. "The investment committee of Kingdom Holding is essentially Alwaleed, and I can't imagine the PIF being at the whims of the prince."

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