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Investing

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Buys $300 Million In Twitter

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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One of the richest and most famous investors in the world, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, has bought a $300 billion stake in microblogging company Twitter. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is famous for risking investments in firms like Citigroup (NYSE: C) which he supported through the depths of the credit crisis. He is know for his savviness and access to capital.

Twitter’s user base has grown to over 150 million users. But, it has been hard for the company to mark money. Many experts believe that it will be hard for the firm’s short microblog messages to be compatible with advertising. Celebrities like Ashton Kusher have large followings well into the millions. This may be good PR for them, but it probably helps Twitter not at all.

Reuters reports that

The Twitter stake, bought jointly by Alwaleed and his Kingdom Holding Co investment firm, resulted from “months of negotiations,” Kingdom said in a statement.

The investment was made at an $8 billion valuation

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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