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Prince Alwaleed, singular Saudi scion
Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal insists he will realise his dream of seeing the world's tallest building soar 1km above Jeddah - although the project is for now below rather than above ground.
He is upset because Forbes said his fortune is smaller than what he has been telling people.
Methinks for same reason as some men insist on walking about with long swords.
has decided to take a very public stand against what he believes is an underestimation of his worth.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi investor whose interests range from the Hotel George V in Paris to a stake in Twitter, announced that he has "severed ties" with the Forbes billionaires list, accusing it of a "flawed" valuation method that displayed a bias against Middle Eastern investors.
Forbes issued a statement that notes steep jumps in Prince Alwaleed's Kingdom Holding stock before publication of the last four Forbes lists, and adds that no other billionaire lobbies as hard as the prince does to affect his or her ranking.
Prince Alwaleed's office reacted angrily to the "completely unsupported and biased allegation based on rumors that stock manipulation 'is the national sport' in Saudi Arabia", describing it as an insult to Saudi regulators.
More about this in a minute.
Teenie weenie alert.
Yeah right.
Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal insists he will realise his dream of seeing the world's tallest building soar 1km above Jeddah - although the project is for now below rather than above ground.
He is upset because Forbes said his fortune is smaller than what he has been telling people.
The man involved in the construction of the world's tallest tower
Methinks for same reason as some men insist on walking about with long swords.
has decided to take a very public stand against what he believes is an underestimation of his worth.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi investor whose interests range from the Hotel George V in Paris to a stake in Twitter, announced that he has "severed ties" with the Forbes billionaires list, accusing it of a "flawed" valuation method that displayed a bias against Middle Eastern investors.
Forbes issued a statement that notes steep jumps in Prince Alwaleed's Kingdom Holding stock before publication of the last four Forbes lists, and adds that no other billionaire lobbies as hard as the prince does to affect his or her ranking.
Prince Alwaleed's office reacted angrily to the "completely unsupported and biased allegation based on rumors that stock manipulation 'is the national sport' in Saudi Arabia", describing it as an insult to Saudi regulators.
The billionaire nephew of King Abdullah says contractors are having to spend months driving piles deep into the earth of the notoriously flood-prone coastal city to support a structure that should one day surpass Dubai's 828m Burj Khalifa."Building the highest rise tower is not that difficult," says the prince, whose Kingdom Holding investment vehicle has an indirect stake in the scheme. "Unfortunately, before you go 1,000m up in the air, you have to go down 100m into the foundations."The scale of ambition, and the complications beneath, seem appropriate for a man who this week found his global investments and iconoclastic status at home under scrutiny. He fell out spectacularly with Forbes magazine over what he saw as a gross underestimate of his wealth in a rich list that gave him only $20bn, rather than the $29.6bn he says he deserved. Like the tower, the spat has provoked debate about whether a royal scion who provides a bridge to the Arab world for multinationals seeks business influence, political power or simple self-gratification - or perhaps all three at once.
As one consultant who knows him puts it: "He wants to have the biggest and the tallest - which encapsulates his personality."
Teenie weenie alert.
The Forbes imbroglio began when the prince declared he was "severing ties" with the magazine, hours before it published a detailed investigation of his wealth. Forbes said its estimate reflected its belief that the true value of the prince's 95 per cent stake in his main company, Kingdom Holding, was much lower than its Saudi share market price suggested. The magazine said it was suspicious that for several years the stock had risen sharply during the period when Forbes collected its valuation data.
Kingdom responded with a detailed rebuttal, describing the allegations of share-price manipulation as "completely unsupported and biased", an insult to Saudi market regulators. The prince is dismissive of what he calls a "personal vendetta". He says he is annoyed not because his ego is hurt
Yeah right.
......but because questions over Kingdom's valuation could damage its commercial standing - and because of the disrespect allegedly shown to Saudi Arabia. "We are in the G20!" he says.
Yet, for all his nationalistic ire, the prince is no typical member of the Saudi establishment. His father, Prince Talal, once headed the renegade Free Princes movement calling for reform in Saudi Arabia.Born in 1955, Prince Alwaleed was schooled in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, followed by a Riyadh military academy, whose discipline he calls "one of the turning points in my life". He graduated in business administration from California's Menlo College in 1979, before starting - unsuccessfully - his investment career using $330,000 in gifts from his father. He says things took off only when he raised a further $600,000 by mortgaging a house, also given to him by his father, and invested the proceeds in Saudi's booming 1980s construction industry.
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