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Prince Alwaleed is not unknown to the investment world, but for the most part he is unseen. To find him you have to travel to the Arabian desert, where he often works from an outdoor office, linked via satellite to the money markets of New York and London. He is the chairman and sole shareholder of Kingdom Holding Co., which manages his investments and serves as the flagship of his privately owned companies. The prince has done well. As of last Friday, his net worth was $12 billion, a figure that has escalated in recent years.
Alwaleed does have a big advantage over most investors: a wad of cash higher than a sand dune--currently about $3 billion--which gives him the ability to move while others are scrambling for funds.
Yell "Hey, prince!" in a crowd of Saudis and chances are half a dozen heads will turn. This country has more royalty than a deck of cards, and lots of them are rich. They are rich first because they can dip a royal straw into that deep well of oil, and second because any foreign company wishing to do business in Saudi Arabia needs a local "partner." The rent-a-prince business has been very lucrative.
As the nephew of King Fahd and grandson of Saudi Arabia's founding father, Ibn Saud, Alwaleed, 40, initially availed himself of the leverage those connections provide. But he has become truly, singularly wealthy through a series of shrewd deals, most famously the headline-making rescue of Citicorp in 1991. The $590 million he pumped into Citi is now worth $5.1 billion. The prince also became a rich uncle for the floundering Disneyland Paris in 1994.
Perhaps a better name for him might be the Prince of Fallen Angels. Alwaleed has taken substantial stakes in companies that are out of favor. He took a bite of Apple because he loved the product. In Britain he bought Canary Wharf, an early '90s real estate disaster that nearly wiped out the billionaire Reichmann family of Canada, after the bottom had fallen out of the market. It takes great courage to invest in the Korean conglomerate Daewoo, given that country's economic troubles, but Alwaleed just bought 5.9% of it. Retailing was ailing in 1992 when he bought heavily into the holding company that owns Saks Fifth Avenue. Upscale retailing took off soon after. He recently bought 7% of Donna Karan International, a design house in disarray. He's even the de facto manager of singer Michael Jackson, a dying supernova that Alwaleed just might reignite.
As much as any other investor today, Alwaleed seems to be exploiting the advantages of an age in which even a man in the desert can be instantly plugged in to the world's information networks. "He is a very dynamic force. He brings tremendous energy to everything he gets involved in," says Robert Earl, Ceo of Planet Hollywood International. "He is totally tuned in to everything." Alwaleed is a master franchiser for Planet Hollywood's concepts, as well as a holder of Planet Hollywood stock. He tracked down Earl on the beach in Barbados, a business-suited entourage in tow, to make the deal.