January 22, 2009, - 7:44 pm

So Sad, Too Bad: Saudi Prince AlWaleed Lost $7.9 Bill

By Debbie Schlussel
I wish that when Prince AlWaleed lost his $7.9 billion, American taxpayers didn’t bail him out by rescuing Citigroup. If the government hadn’t bailed out Citi, AlWaleed would really have gone to the cleaners. After all, he’s still worth many billions of dollars. And what’s the loss of a few billions to a multi-billionaire? He’s still worth between $10 and $20 billion.
Still, at least he got soaked a little. He is, after all, a major donor to homicide bomber telethons and a big hater of Jews, Israel, and America (he hates us, but he buys us).

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, seen just a few months ago as a bastion of Mideast support for banking giant Citigroup Inc., said Tuesday his Saudi Arabian conglomerate, Kingdom Holding Co., lost 29.7 billion Saudi riyals, or about $7.92 billion, in 2008.

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Saudi Prince: Tried to Bribe Giuliani Against Israel, Owns FOX NEWS

The loss — about half of which Kingdom Holding blamed on impairments to its investment portfolio — coincided with the release of a survey in Dubai showing business confidence across the oil-rich Persian Gulf plummeted last quarter.
Just a few months ago, the region seemed relatively isolated from fallout from the global financial crisis convulsing much of the rest of the world. But amid tumbling oil prices, economists are revising downward oil-revenue forecasts and economic-growth estimates here.
Analysts still expect previous years of budget surpluses in places like Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters to cushion the blow of falling oil proceeds. But many governments have also socked away cash in government-controlled investment funds. Those funds, like Mr. Alwaleed’s privately owned investment company Kingdom Holding, have in recent years bet heavily on Western companies, including financial firms that have been beaten up particularly badly in recent months.
The Gulf’s biggest investment vehicles, including regional central banks who typically invest a government’s cash reserves in more liquid assets such as U.S. Treasurys, lost some $350 billion last year, according to an estimate published last week in a working paper by the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank. That equates to about 27% of the funds’ value at the end of 2007. It’s impossible to say for sure how the funds have really performed as most of them don’t disclose much data.
Kingdom Holding, a conglomerate with interests in banking, hotels and private equity, said Tuesday in an English-language release to journalists that it had reported an annual operating loss last year of 14.7 billion riyals, or $3.92 billion. It also said it provided for “impairment losses” of an additional 15 billion Saudi riyals, or about $4 billion, citing “investment portfolio provisions.”
Mr. Alwaleed founded Kingdom Holding in 1980. Its international portfolio includes Fortune 500 companies Citigroup, Apple Inc., News Corp. (owner of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal) [DS: AND FOX NEWS], Time Warner Inc., and eBay Inc., according to the company’s Web site. . . .
Mr. Alwaleed’s company is also one of the biggest investors in firms listed on the Saudi stock exchange, which lost 47% of its value last year. The Saudi bourse reported in October that Mr. Alwaleed owned 94% of Kingdom’s 6.3 billion shares. Kingdom stock, traded on the exchange in Riyadh, fell 62% last year.

So sad, too bad. If only it were worse.
Modern Art That Warms My Heart . . .

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17 Responses

AAAAWWWW poor baby

mindy1 on January 22, 2009 at 8:21 pm

I’m glad that this creep lost money; unfortunately he didn’t lose enough, but I’m sure that he and others like him have hired the best lobbyists money can buy to ensure that they continue to get bailout money at our expense.
There is little transparency in the bailout funds; Hussein’s statements that there will be transparency will not be carried out; even if they were, this says nothing about who will get the money, or what it will be used for, just that it will be transparent, and of course the word ‘transparent’ will mean whatever these people want it to mean.
If ‘transparent’ at all, only in the most general, general, terms.
BTW, I wonder how many of the lobbyists for these creeps are Jewish?

c f on January 22, 2009 at 8:24 pm

Debbie, I’m really happy with this post!
However, I’m still fuming over the 6 million change he donated to ADC in 2005, and $20 million each to Harvard University and Georgetown University which shamelessly accepted for departments teaching the “Muslim-Christian Understanding” courses. He’s also donated millions of pounds to Cambridge University and other places for similar reasons. These courses were obviously another outlet to spread their islamo-crap. The man may be a little poorer now but he’s sowed enough seeds of islamo-garbage for the dumbed-down liberal idiots to digest and puke on us later.

anonymous twit on January 22, 2009 at 9:47 pm

What he lost today, he’ll gain back tomorrow when the economy rebounds.
The strategic (long-term) path to victory over Islamo-Fascist terrorism is the elimination of petroleum as the prime mover of America’s transportation system. This can be done rather quickly with a flex-fuel vehicle mandate. This would give automotive fuel consumers choice in fuels.
For a hundred bucks, any car can be made to be flex fuel. By that, I mean the car can be run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol or methanol.
We don’t even have to make the fuels. We just need to make the cars. The ability to use alcohol fuels in our cars would place a PERMANENT ceiling on the price of petroleum of $60/barrel thus insuring that All-the-weed and his ilk can NEVER charge us $140/barrel for petroleum again.
Brazil has already done this successfully.
So you can celebrate All-the-weed’s financial loss today and lament his gains tomorrow. Or we can erect a brick wall preventing him and his ilk from ever recouping his losses in the petroleum market.
The Open Fuels Standard Act of 2008 provides a mandate for flex fuel vehicles. It’s supporters include liberals, centrists and conservatives such as: Frank Gaffney, Robert Zubrin PHd, James Woolsey, Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle, Robert MacFarlane, Daniel Pipes, and yours truly.
Now that we got ’em down, here’s our chance to KEEP ’em down.
What are YOU going to do about it?
For more information: http://www.setamericafree.org/home.html

There is NO Santa Claus on January 22, 2009 at 10:03 pm

*Or we can erect a brick wall preventing him and his ilk from ever recouping his losses in the petroleum market.*
Unfortunately, BHO is too close to Islam and his Muslim friends in the Middle East for this to ever happen. We could become self-sufficient by drilling for oil in our own country, but BHO has already decided to stop all off-shore drilling.

Gabe on January 22, 2009 at 10:08 pm

Report: Western banks divesting their Shariah-Compliant units
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/2009/01/16/report-western-banks-divesting-their-shariah-compliant-units/
but will the short sighted learn from:
Barclays may lose control to Gulf investors
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4309296/Barclays-may-lose-control-to-Gulf-investors.html
Not if recent reports are any indication
There they go again: Shariah-Compliant finance masquerading as “ethical” investing
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/2009/01/21/there-they-go-again-shariah-compliant-finance-masquerading-as-ethical-investing/
More at
Shariah Finance Watch.org
http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/

heroyalwhyness on January 22, 2009 at 10:45 pm

I wish I had $7.9B to loose. We are the puppets for China and the wealthy Arabs and Saudis. I mean if everyone in the world loses 30-40% of their wealth, then I don’t think it really matters.

californiascreaming on January 22, 2009 at 11:27 pm

This is bigger than it seems. Not only did this Yahoo lose big, but I read somewhere the Arabs lost like 2.5 trillion.
What does this mean? It means less financing of Wahabism (including funding of terrorists) and less financing of their propaganda arm in the West (they have paid for many academic centers and faculty chairs at Universities in the US and Europe).

i_am_me on January 22, 2009 at 11:53 pm

This is a drop in the barrel.

Shy Guy on January 23, 2009 at 12:02 am

He must have invested with Bernie Madoff! He lost more money for you neo-clowns than anyone and there is more to come.So sad, too bad. If only it were worse for Bernie’s Jfriends. HA HA HA HA

New Day on January 23, 2009 at 6:39 am

He must have invested with Bernie Madoff! He did more to screw you neo-clowns than anyone could possibly hope.
So sad, too bad. If only it were worse for Bernies JFriends. HA HA HA HA

New Day on January 23, 2009 at 6:43 am

Thanks for this article. It seems no one has touched this extensively. Part of the drive up of energy prices came from speculations. For example: they announced that crude was 143 and would be 200 by such and such date. I realise their losses are hundreds of billions of dollars separate from reducted cash flow from crude sales. In August there were a huge number of tankers waiting to unload. By waiting just 7 days, the crude went up 2 dollars a barrel.
Now apply the principles of leverage. some speculation was done on a margin giving a yield of 10 times the investment or 10 times the loss.
It would be reasonable to believe there was a good part of a trillion dollars lost to hedging.
This loss will interfere with the purchase of weapons.

seven on January 23, 2009 at 9:15 am

I am getting ready to convert my vehicle to flex fuel.

norman on January 23, 2009 at 10:17 am

Prince AlWaleed lost his $7.9 billion, He did not lose a dime!
Please look this over it will absoltuly floor you !
Respectfully,
Johnny V
CAFR Government Shell Game Scam No Federal Debt No State Debt
http://caf1.com
The CAFR is the “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report” for all local governments, the Fed , Treasury, etc.. in the United States with over 84,000 individual Annual Financial Reports completed each year by the Fed & local government’s
For edification you should be aware that –
The 5 Buroughs and Manhattan back in 1995 had a combined Excess of Cash of over $1.2 T dollars. Why are we paying taxes ?
CALPI just hired 450 traders to handle their offshore investments !
CAFR Government Shell Game Scam No Federal Debt No State Debt
CAFR Ferderal , State, School Board,State Retirement Fund Government Shell Game Scam There is No Federal Debt, No State Debt,No County Debt !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUGaO8ALZV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqVF8VqHv7w&feature=related
The CAFR is the “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report” for all local governments in the United States with over 84,000 individual Annual Financial Reports completed each year by the Fed & local government’s,
School Districts, Cities, Counties, Enterprise Authorities, and Government Pension funds complete a CAFR each year starting with the first in the year 1945 and yet not a peep from the syndicated media, organized education, the political parties. Is Silence is Golden true in this respect?
Local and Federal Government’s gross income in 1999 was 8.5 trillion dollars and the entire population’s of the USA gross income, “net after taxation” 4.8 trillion dollars.
Would you like to see the Government Accounting Office (GAO) Audit of the IRS?
Then CLICK HERE (to save this file you have to scroll to the end of the report for it to finish uploading then it can be saved) http://cafr1.com/STATES/FEDERAL-GAO-AUDIT-OF-IRS/FED-GAO-AUDIT-OF-IRS-FINANCIAL-STATEMENTS1999.pdf
Jump to page 89 and 90. (Data for the 1999 report gives 1997’s info shown)
Personal individual income of the USA is listed as 5 trillion dollars (add across all in Gross Income column) and
Corporate at 15.5 trillion dollars (add across all in Total Receipts column) .
After Corporate deductions it left the largest corporations with about a 1.5% tax bill and for personal income (page 89) after deductions for the largest personal individual incomes a 27.04% tax bill.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6703413885850200097
Complete Article
http://cafr1.com/ThePuzzle.html

Johnny V on January 24, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Debbie, one key point everyone seems to be missing about this “investment” and those of the uber-rich like Buffet are the potential underlying derivative transactions these banks entered into with these investors. The trillions of dollars of credit default swaps and interest rate swaps are where the leverage comes from to give above market returns to these privileged investors who are able to effortlessly “skim” money out of the stock market. It all works marvelously until the counter party, i.e. Citibank, goes under water, putting the trades entered into by al-Waleed that we haven’t heard about. The bailout is mostly to support these banks long enough for these ultimately connected people to get their money out before the whole thing crashes down. If all this information came out, there would be a revolution in the USA.

Concerned Citizen on January 24, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Concerned Citizen , remember Buffet,his buddy Gates, etc.. the government has the majority of the shares in their corporation.(see CAFR The Banks get $9B from the federal reserve every month. They do not need the bail out money period. All the banks are able to move their money everyday with currency trading.They can leverage their funds 40 – 30 – 20 to one on the market, ( that is why Soros is making a lot of money). Take the time to look at the (http://caf1.com )and the information that I have posted, you will then see what they are reporting is on the proposed buget,not the CAFR. No one is losing money they are just getting more control over the free market , so there is no more free market, so that the government has complete control that includes School boards, local government,state, and federal.
please everyone take the time to look this over it is a little involved but you will understand what is realy going on.

Johnny V on January 25, 2009 at 12:28 pm

I’ve seen no one note that Prince Alwaleed, through his US legal foundation headed by Khalid al-Mansour/formerly, Black Panther co-founder Donald Warden, was a major benefactor (perhaps principle?) of Barak Obama/Soetoro from his Occidental years through Harvard (according to Percy Sutton, former New York Assemblyman and attorney to Malcom-X, Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson. Sutton was interviewed on a local New York interview show, where he described the call he got from al-Mansour soliciting influence to get Obama into Harvard, and repeating al-Mansour’s description of ‘a young man he is helping.’

Spaulding on February 13, 2009 at 5:30 pm

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