The 'Prince' of Investors

Here we are with our first post dedicated to the Hall of Fame of the Master Investors walking around the Planet. The purpose of these post won’t be to build the image of the ideal, or the best, investing way in order to give you a guideline as: ‘follow it and you’ll become like him’, because it would be quite useless and, you permit, stupid!
By the way all these persons have something interesting to say and I really push you to find all you can read about them on Internet and on other medias because they’d give you some great ideas about what investing means!
The first one is his Highness Prince Al-Walid (Al-Walid ben Talal ben Abdul Aziz Al Saoud to be exact) a member of Saudi Royal family. Price Al-Walid’s particularity is that his huge richness is not coming by Oil as everyone could normally think about an Arabian prince, but by investments in real estate and Stock Markets. His ability with Value investment has become legendary and Time magazine has named him as Arabic Warren Buffett.
His biggest investment has been in early 90s buying a large stake into Citigroup at the time the Bank was in troubles with south Americas crisis and loans (seems to ear about subprime crisis?). At that time Al Walid has invested about 550millions of dollars, now its stakes is worth about 10bil of dollars and it contributes at his Forbes ranking as 19th World richest man with an estimated fortune of about 29bil dollars: The Value of Buy and Holding forever (20 years for his case).
Other majors’ successful investments in Stock exchange have been in Apple, AOL, News Corporations and other real investments business especially in Hotels and Resorts.
The key thing is not looking at his amazing trakrecord but to his style of life and his devotion to traditions and friendships. Although he is living a great life full of pleasure he has never forgotten his roots and where he has started: a loan by his father and a mortage in his own house to go to US and study management and make his first investments.
I really suggest you to watch some of his interviews on Youtube or, if you speak French on Zone Interdite.
Prince Al-Walid and his investments have the first welcome to our Master Investors Hall of Fame.