Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Takes $300 Million Stake In Twitter
Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal has added Twitter to his long list of investments, putting $300 million into the social media company. The billionaire investor announced the move in a statement, saying the investment followed months of negotiation and due diligence.
“Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact,” Alwaleed said in a statement. The statement did not indicate the Prince’s ownership stake in Twitter or the implied value of Twitter given the new investment.
Alwaleed ranked 26th on Forbes’ 2011 list of the World’s Billionaires, with a fortune estimated at $19.6 billion.
The investment was made in part by Kingdom Holding Co., Alwaleed’s Saudi-listed investment firm, and in part by the Prince directly. Alwaleed owns 95% of Kingdom Holding, which also has stakes in Citigroup, General Motors, Apple, News Corp. and numerous other companies.
Prince Alwaleed does not use Twitter –his favorite mode of communication is texting – but his wife, Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, is a regular user and has more than 81,000 followers on the site, which allows people to broadcast messages up to 140 characters in length. Twitter has 100 million active users worldwide.
“We believe that social media will fundamentally change the media industry landscape in the coming years. Twitter will capture and monetize this positive trend,” said Ahmed Halawani, the Executive Director of private equity and international investments at Kingdom Holding.
Twitter is still in the early days of monetizing its growing traffic, but growth is clear. Revenues are likely to hit $139.5 million this year, triple what they were in 2010, according to eMarketer.
source: forbes.com
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