Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud has been ranked fourth on Forbes' annual list of the World's Richest People. The Prince is said to have a net worth of $21.5 billion.
The magazine compiled 538 billionaires from 46 countries this year, with an average net worth of $3.2 billion. Some 46 percent of the wealthy saw their fortunes increase in the last year, while 37 percent watched them decline.
Chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates perched atop the list for the 10th straight year with a net worth of $46.6 billion. Investor Warren Buffet came in at number 2 with a fortune of $42.9 billion and German supermarket entrepreneur Karl Albrecht remained in third place with a fortune of $23 billion.
Prince Waleed is the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company (KHIG) with a paid-up capital of $211 million and an authorized capital of $400 million. The Prince holds six percent of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, 17.3 percent of Disney Land Paris, a stake in Time Warner and shares in the Walt Disney Company. In December, he purchased a 49 percent stake in the satellite broadcasting arm of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) for $98 million. — (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
