Al-Waleed bin Talal

His grandmother, an Armenian, was presented by the emir of Unayzah to King Abdulaziz in 1921, when she was 12 years old and Abdulaziz was 45.

His maternal grandparents were Riad Al Solh, the first prime minister of Lebanon, and Fayza Al Jabiri, the sister of Syrian Prime Minister Saadallah al-Jabiri.

Al Waleed's parents separated when he was seven, and he lived with his mother in Lebanon.

He first attended Pinewood College in Beirut.

As a boy, he ran away from home for a day or two at a time, sleeping in unlocked cars, before attending the King Abdulaziz Military Academy in Riyadh.

Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud (الوليد بن طلال آل سعود; born 7 March 1955) is a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and royal.

Al Waleed bin Talal was born in Jeddah on 7 March 1955 to Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz and Mona El Solh.

His father was Saudi Arabia's finance minister during the early 1960s, before he went into exile due to his advocacy for political reform.

Al Waleed's paternal grandparents were King Abdulaziz and Munaiyir.

In 1974, he returned to Lebanon, attending the Choueifat School and then Manor School.

He returned to Saudi Arabia, which was in the midst of the 1974–85 oil boom.

Al Waleed received a bachelor's degree in business administration from Menlo College in California in 1979, finishing in two-and-a-half years, and a master's degree with honors in social science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 1985, finishing in eleven months.

Al Waleed began his business career in 1979 after graduating from Menlo College.

Operating from a small, four-room cabin in Riyadh and $30,000 start-up money provided by his father, Al Waleed formed Kingdom Establishment in 1980.

When that money ran out in a few months, he secured a $300,000 loan from the Saudi American Bank, partly owned by Citibank.

Rather than taking a commission for facilitating contracts as the legally required middleman, Al Waleed insisted on a stake in the project.

His first success was in 1982, partnering with a South Korean construction company, and from then on, his commissions were used to fund his real estate deals.

In his own words, "All the money I used to get from this construction I would plough back into real estate, and in the stock market, both."

After the end of the Saudi oil boom, Al Waleed acquired the underperforming United Saudi Commercial Bank (USCB).

Through mergers with Saudi Cairo Bank (SCB), forming United Saudi Bank (USB), and the Saudi American Bank (SAMBA), it became a leading Middle Eastern bank.

The hostile takeover of USCB in 1986, the merger with SCB in 1997, and the merger of USB with SAMBA in 1999, were the first of their kind in the Kingdom.

He then secured a majority in Al-Azizia Panda, merging it with the Savola Group, and took over National Industrialization Company.

By 1989, his net worth was $1.4 billion, and included stakes in Canary Wharf, Four Seasons Hotel Group, and News Corporation.

When Al Waleed turned to the international market, he focused on "established brands going through hard times," as Riz Khan puts it.

Al Waleed would do his homework, and then wait for the proper purchase entry point.

He invested about $250 million in Chase Manhattan, Citigroup, Manufacturers Hanover, and Chemical Bank.

After seven months, he sold his stakes in the other banks and concentrated on investing in Citicorp, acquiring 4.9 percent of the bank.

He was listed on Time magazine's Time 100, an annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world, in 2008.

Al Waleed is a grandson of Abdulaziz, the first king of Saudi Arabia, and of Riad Al Solh, Lebanon's first prime minister.

Al Waleed is the founder, chief executive officer and 95 percent owner of the Kingdom Holding Company, a company with investments in companies in the financial services, tourism and hospitality, mass media, entertainment, retail, agriculture, petrochemicals, aviation, technology, and real-estate sectors.

In 2013, the company had a market capitalization of over $18 billion.

He owns Paris' Four Seasons Hotel George V and part of New York's Plaza Hotel.

Time has called him the "Arabian Warren Buffett".

He was listed in the 'Top 100 most powerful Arabs' from 2013 to 2021 by Gulf Business.

In November 2017, Forbes listed Al Waleed as the 7th-richest man in the world, with a net worth of $39.8 billion.

On 4 November 2017, Al Waleed and other prominent Saudis (including fellow billionaires Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim and Saleh Abdullah Kamel) were arrested in Saudi Arabia, in a purge that the Saudi government characterized as an anti-corruption drive.

The allegations against Al Waleed include money laundering, bribery, and extorting officials.

Some of the detainees have been in the Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh, since then.

Al Waleed was released from detention on 27 January 2018, following a financial settlement of some kind, after nearly three months in detention.

In March 2018 he was dropped from the World's Billionaires list due to lack of current information.