Saudi Prince & $8 Billion in Losses (C, PCLN, PEP, MOT, HPQ, EBAY, AAPL, EK)

If you are not familiar with the name Kingdom Holding Co., you may know its owner by the name of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.  He has been a very visible investor in many companies including Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C).  There are reports that his holding company has lost roughly $8.26 billion in the last quarter.

After lookingat the Kingdom.com site showing the current investments, you can startto see how so many losses came.  Some of its investments are MovenPick, SAMBA, FairmontHotels, Priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ: PCLN) , Pepsico (NYSE: PEP),Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY),Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK).

Bloomberg gave the figure of 31 billion riyals as the figure released by Kingdom Holding Co.  While Kingdom Holding Co. has major position ownership in Four Seasons,Citi may be the core of the losses.  The prince said he was goingto raise his position to roughly 5% at the end of last year.Unfortunately, Citi is down some 85% over the last year. 

Just like the old lady real estate agent said in the movie Wall Street, "Even the rich are bitchin’."

Jon C. Ogg
January 20, 2009