Saudi's Kingdom Holding buys $450 million stake in Citigroup from Alwaleed

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

The company previously owned 1.6 per cent 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.

Alwaleed rose to international prominence after making a big successful bet on Citigroup in the 1990s when the bank struggled with Latin American loan losses and the U.S. real estate market collapse. He was also an early investor in Apple.

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

The prince made hundreds of millions of dollars by investing in companies from Uber to social network Twitter, now known as X.