The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its seemingly endless reserves of oil beneath the ground, has seen the Saudi royal family, comprising 15,000 princes, become the wealthiest royal family in the world. In Saudi Arabia, the princes' income comes from the state's financial budget, and they receive a monthly "pocket money" based on their degree of kinship with the current king. The closest princes receive about 300,000 US dollars per month, while the most distant ones still get 8,000 US dollars.

However, in Saudi Arabia, there is a prince who, due to his parents' influence, has been far removed from the royal center and a life of luxury. Yet, he has managed to become the wealthiest among the Saudi princes through his own efforts, starting from scratch. He is known as the "Middle Eastern Warren Buffett," Prince Alwaleed.

The unwelcome Saudi prince, who started from scratch with 15,000 US dollars

Alwaleed was born into a royal Saudi family in 1955. His grandfather was the founding monarch of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but his father was an unpopular radical, and his mother was the daughter of the first Prime Minister of Lebanon. Alwaleed, with a sensitive identity and impure bloodline, did not have a good childhood in Saudi Arabia. Later, when his father went into exile in Egypt, Alwaleed had to move to Lebanon with his mother, where he hung out with street thugs and became a troubled teenager.

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At the age of 13, his father, noticing Alwaleed's wayward path, used his connections to send him to a military academy in Saudi Arabia for education. The strict life in the military academy helped Alwaleed grow up. He became more composed and responsible.

In 1979, Alwaleed went to study business administration at Menlo College in San Francisco, USA. This made Alwaleed a versatile person, mastering knowledge related to finance and economics. After graduation, Alwaleed borrowed 15,000 US dollars from his father as startup capital and opened a company in Saudi Arabia. Leveraging his status as a Saudi prince, he acted as a lubricant between foreign investors and Saudi Arabia, involving himself in various fields such as oil trade, business project development, and real estate. In just a few years, he accumulated billions of US dollars in funds. However, he was not satisfied with his existing achievements and turned his attention to the field of financial investment.

In 1980, Alwaleed founded Kingdom Holding, starting his extraordinary investment career.

Switching to financial investment and becoming the renowned "Middle Eastern Warren Buffett"

At the end of the 1980s, Citibank suffered repeated setbacks in real estate investment and was heavily in debt, causing its stock price to plummet. In 1991, Alwaleed injected 590 million US dollars into the nearly bankrupt Citibank, saving it with his own strength. Today, the initial 590 million US dollars has turned into 10 billion US dollars, making Alwaleed the largest individual shareholder of Citibank.Alwaleed bin Talal's other proud achievement was his low-cost investment in Apple Inc. In 1997, during Apple's low point, he bought 5% of Apple's shares for $115 million, becoming the largest individual investor in the company. Today, Apple has become the world's most valuable technology company.

After the "9/11" incident in 2001, when almost all investors wanted to flee the United States, Prince Alwaleed invested $400 million in the New York Stock Exchange shortly after it resumed trading, buying stocks of some well-known companies at low prices. Now, his "foolish" move at the time is bringing him a steady stream of wealth.

Alwaleed continues to expand into the vast international market, and his investments cover almost all aspects of global business. He has successively taken shares in globally renowned companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, McDonald's, Disney, Time Warner, Ford, Amazon, eBay, and JD.com, becoming the world-famous "Middle East stock god."

Investment Philosophy: Insist on "Investing in the Best"

For many years, Alwaleed and his Kingdom Holding Company have been able to achieve high investment returns and global acclaim due to their unique value investment philosophy. The investment philosophy of Kingdom Holding is "Invest in the Best." Looking at the stocks invested by Kingdom Holding, most of them are leading stocks in their respective industries, focusing on whether the stocks have stable and predictable returns and whether their brands have a global strategy.

Alwaleed once invested billions of dollars in several old and new economy stocks in the United States, showing his attention to traditional value investment. However, his value investment philosophy is not limited to stocks with low price-to-earnings ratios; some oversold stocks can also become his buying targets.

Alwaleed said, "I am always looking for the same thing - internationally renowned multinational companies with healthy and solid foundations, but they are temporarily in trouble." He often chooses to invest in large enterprises struggling on the edge of survival, rescuing them from desperate situations through operation.

In 2020, Alwaleed ranked 95th on the Hurun Global Rich List with a wealth of 100 billion yuan. Although he is already wealthy, he continues to write his own investment legend.