Arab prince buys Twitter stake; recoils from Arab Spring

The investment follows "several months of negotiations", [said] a company statement.
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The prince, who is one of the world's richest men, owns stakes in many well-known companies. ... [He said,] "Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability...to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact."   

   
Shaji Mathew and Mourad Haroutunian add:

Kingdom Holding...[is a] Riyadh-based company, controlled by Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.
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The prince was ranked the richest Arab businessman this year by Arabian Business magazine. ... Kingdom Holding [is] 95 percent owned by the prince.   

Colleen Taylor runs the numbers:

With a reported net worth of $19.6 billion...Alwaleed is the 26th richest person in the world. ... He has been a high profile owner of Apple stock since 1997, when he bought a five percent stake.
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Of course, [Twitter] is working to generate money on its own accord: Earlier this month...[it gave] brands special abilities to build dedicated profile pages...part of an effort to ultimately bring more advertisers.   

As Chris Greenhough notes, it's a family affair:

Alas, it doesn’t look like the prince will play with his new toy much. He prefers texting...though his wife, Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, is apparently a veteran Tweeter with more than 81,000 followers.   

On-cue, Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel tweets on-message:

Congratulations for Kingdom holding Investors for the Twitter announcement. ... Great planned move and a great investment.   

Meanwhile, David Keohane trumpets the elephant in the room:

Twitter...[is] used frequently as a tool of protest [so] the move might seem a bit odd for a member of the royal family in a country which is nervous of the internet, [but] it seems to make sense to the shareholders of Kingdom Holding.   

And Ben Parr runs with the pachydermic angle:

One could speculate that the Twitter investment is related to the wave of revolutions that have swept the Middle East. ... [He] is not an immediate successor to [the] throne, but a revolution would certainly not be in his best interests.
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[The] Prince wants to have a seat at the table when it comes to the world’s most...influential media organizations. The Prince understands the influence of media and can see that Twitter is the future.
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There aren’t a lot of downsides to owning a piece of that future.   

  
And Finally...
Gross Anatomy
  
 
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. He's the creator and main author of Computerworld's IT Blogwatch -- for which he has won American Society of Business Publication Editors and Jesse H. Neal awards on behalf of Computerworld. He also writes The Long View for IDG Enterprise. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com. You can also read Richi's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.