Saudi’s Kingdom Holding buys $450mn stake in Citigroup from Alwaleed

DUBAI: Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s investment company Kingdom Holding said on Wednesday it raised its ownership in Citigroup to 2.2% after acquiring from the prince a stake in the bank worth about $450 million.

The company previously owned 1.6% of the Wall Street lender, it told the Saudi bourse in a filing, adding that the deal supported Kingdom Holding’s strategic plans, but did not elaborate.

Saudi Arabia’s self-styled Warren Buffett, the prince has made hundreds of millions of dollars by investing with almost complete autonomy in companies from Uber to social network Twitter, now known as X.

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Alwaleed rose to international prominence after making a big successful bet on Citigroup in the 1990s and he was an early investor in Apple.

Last year, the billionaire prince sold a stake of 16.87% to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. He owns a stake of 78.1% in Kingdom Holding, with the remaining 5% floated on the Saudi stock exchange.