Prince Alwaleed who owns 94% of Kingdom Holding, an investment company, has made marks in the social media world with the purchase of a $300m stake in Twitter.
"Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact," said Prince Alwaleed.
In a statement today, Kingdom Holding said the agreement took "several months of negotiations." The investment represents over a 3% stake in the microblogging site with over 100 million users. Kingdom Holding believes that social media will significantly affect the scale of the media industry in the coming years.
Ahmed Halawani, KHC Executive Director of Private Equity and International Investments said: "We believe that social media will fundamentally change the media industry landscape in the coming years. Twitter will capture and monetise this positive trend."
Arab Business Magazine ranked the Saudi Prince as the richest Arab man this year, with financial assets estimated at $21.3bn. Prince Alwaleed, the nephew of Saudia Arabia’s King Abdullah, is also Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder acquiring stocks in the company in 1991. The prince has other stakes in companies like Apple Inc, Time Warner, Motorola, Hewlett Packard and many others.
The investment in Twitter is a clear sign of the growing strength social media will have in the future and is having a domino effect on investors as they continue to jump on board the social media bandwagon.
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